European camera grant project

07.10.2023 - Joost Schouppe

OpenStreetMap Belgium & Mapillary are teaming up to improve the availability of street-level imagery available in the European Union! To help do so, we will be distributing a number of GoPro Max 360° cameras and associated gear to volunteers all over Europe. The 360° imagery we will generate will help improve Mapillary coverage as well as provide street level imagery for the OpenStreetMap community to use to further improve their map data.

The program

Meta has financed twenty GoPro Max 360° and accessories to capture on foot, by bicycle or by car. The kit includes suction cups, an SD card, a selfie stick and gear to mount on a bicycle helmet.

The GoPro Max was chosen for four reasons:

Ease of use: The GoPro Max is incredibly simple to use. Just hit record and drop the images into Mapillary’s Desktop Uploader.
Form factor: The camera is lightweight and designed for action, which makes it suitable for a variety of capture scenarios you might have in mind. A lighter camera means lighter mounting equipment.
Cost: It’s affordable, allowing us to scale up the program and get more cameras to more people.
Image quality: While there are cameras capable of capturing a higher quality 360º image, the GoPro does a lot considering its price and form factor. Mapillary is able to derive a lot of map data from GoPro Max images including the location of sidewalks.

Objectives & requirements

There will be more candidates than we have cameras, so we will be evaluating candidates based on their track record and potential. Some things to consider:

We’d like to focus on areas that are less accessible in cars, like paths and trails or city centers. We’ve had good results with shooting from a bicycle, but are open to other ways of collecting images too.
You need to provide your Mapillary username and already have uploaded at least 100.000 images. The only exception we can make is if you are part of an organization (company, local mapper group, nonprofit,…) that you might turn into systematic contributors.
You need to live in a European Union country, to simplify cross border transactions.
We expect you to use the camera for a long time. We retain the right to ask you to send the camera back if it is not used for six months or longer.
We encourage candidates from existing networks, so that the camera can be shared between community members. The original recipient needs to keep us informed about the whereabouts of the camera.
You should have access to a sufficiently strong internet connection with sufficient quotum to be able to upload imagery.
We have a strong preference for people who are already contributing to OpenStreetMap and/or have plans for specific uses for the imagery or its derived data already.

Selection process

The 20 cameras have been allocated and are being distributed. You will be able to follow the results via https://www.mapillary.com/app/org/eucameragrant1 to 20

Any questions or suggestions: send them to cameras@osm.be