Geckomatics 

It’s the idea behind Geckomatics, a company offering an AI tool to help cities understand their infrastructures more quickly and affordably.

Geckomatics’ proprietary mapping camera and AI model helps cities create regularly refreshed digital inventories of everything from potholes to traffic signs and trees to bridges. These inventories are incredibly important when cities must do things like insure each and every tree within city limits; any inaccuracy in the count can cost money.

“Everybody is familiar with Google Street View. What we do is very akin to that, except we add artificial intelligence throughout the whole process,’’ explains co-founder and CEO Bert Cattoor. With the addition of AI to traditional mobile mapping, the number of images that need to be directly annotated is greatly reduced. The Geckomatics’ staff trains an algorithm to automatically spot key items like potholes, trees, and traffic signs in the vast quantity of captured video.

Cattoor’s idea for the company came from work as an IT consultant for a local government. “The Geographic Information Systems group was next door and they had a big frustration. They never had enough geographic information to work with.” It was a constant battle against outdated, missing data and the cost and time associated with updating it.

Geckomatics sought to create a solution that would eliminate these two barrier issues: cost and time. In contrast to traditional players in the mapping space that have dedicated vehicles for mapping, Geckomatics’ hardware is a small mountable camera that customers can attach to any car and take video themselves, which flows directly back to Geckomatics’ tool. This greatly reduces the logistical burden associated with mapping in various locations.

“One of the most important differences our customers see is the speed at which you can get results. In traditional mobile mapping, these are multi month projects. Whereas we are able to deliver results in a matter of days, which is spectacularly better. In addition, our approach to the hardware costs 50 times less than competing hardware. So, in a way, we are raising the bar in terms of what can be done with mobile mapping,” says Joren Van Severen, co-founder and CTO.

Their Challenge

Customers use Geckomatics’ proprietary video technology to survey their streets, routes, highways, and other geographic locations. A portion of the images are sent to CloudFactory where team members annotate the images using Geckomatics’ tool. CloudFactory also checks images that were labeled using the AI solution.

“We get feedback from CloudFactory, which is really helpful and it improves our work. It’s just a much more healthy way of working together than with a company that chooses its own labeling tools,’’ Van Severen says.

Flexibility is also important. The work isn’t steady. It’s based on when Geckomatics wins a contract, who with, and when that customer provides image data. “If we need more capacity, CloudFactory delivers.’’

The Results