As the saying goes “All Roads lead to Rome”, is geographically obvious at least in Europe but the more interesting question on this quest for mobility is – if you ever to travel to Rome from a remote corner of Europe which route would you take?
Do all roads lead to Rome? © 2015 moovel Group GmbH
Do all roads really lead to Rome? This is the question that bugged us all summer … But now we finally solved the biggest unsolved quest of mobility. – Raphael, Moovellabs
All Roads lead to Rome, but then which one do you take?
In case you were wondering, there are more than half a billion routes that one can take across Europe to reach Roma Aeterna.
To approach one of the biggest unsolved quests of mobility, the first question we asked ourselves was: Where do you start, when you want to know every road to Rome? – Moovellabs
In order to answer that question, they created a 26,503,452 km² grid covering the whole of Europe; assigned each cell in this grid as a starting point, ending up with 486,713 starting points to find out the route to Rome.
Hey Siri, Can you show the route from 486,713 “Starting points” to Rome!
Obviously, Siri was not going to be pleased with that request. The Moovellabs teams used GraphHopper and OpenStreetMap data on a MacBook Pro (Apple fan rejoicing 😉 ) and 5 hours later, they had the awesome map that we are looking at now!
The #GeoawesomeMap showing all the roads that lead to Rome © 2015 moovel Group GmbH
Data Art. Map Art. Whatever you want to call it, the map is simply geoawesome and the best part is – its available as a poster, on your Mug, for your iPhone or Galaxy smartphone. Great job @MoovelLab it can’t get more geoawesome than this 😉
Open Source and the Geo Community
The Roads To Rome project by Moovellabs is yet another great showcase for the amazing stuff that the Open Source community keeps creating time and time using spatial data. If you are interested in taking a peek behind the maps, head here.
One more thing!
In typical “Stevenote” style (Yes, that’s a thing and even has a Wikipedia page), the team extended the idea to map the route to Romes in the USA (Fun fact: there are ten of them in the USA), the routes to the state capitals in USA and the national capitals in Europe.
Roads to Rome (10x) – USA version © 2015 moovel Group GmbH
Roads to Federal Capitals in USA – © 2015 moovel Group GmbH
Roads to the capitals in Europe © 2015 moovel Group GmbH
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The world’s largest maker of drones, Chinese DJI, has teamed up with FLIR, a leader in thermal imaging technology, to bring infrared cameras to DJI’s drones.
Using a FLIR thermal imaging sensor, the camera can capture images that can be used for firefighting, search and rescue or structural inspections, among other applications. The partnership could expand the small drone market, making the “non-professional” UVAs more useful for police, firefighters, farmers and other.
DJI shared a youtube video showing the drone being used by firefighters. The infrared camera provides a quick look at what areas of the building are still fairly cold and by that means it provides information on where it is still safe to walk (in that case the roof top and upper levels on the building).
Drone market is growing fast. Analysts estimate that this Christmas customers will buy 700k devices mostly for personal use. With this partnership DJI clearly shows that it wants to expand its business also to the commercial segment, which has been dominated by expensive professional UVAs.
source: DJI
