Creating accurate maps today is a painstaking, time-consuming manual process, even with access to satellite imagery and mapping software. Many regions — particularly in the developing world — remain largely unmapped. To help close this gap, Facebook AI researchers and engineers have developed a new method that uses deep learning and weakly supervised training to predict road networks from commercially available high-resolution satellite imagery.
The resulting model sets a new bar for the state of the art for accuracy, and because it is able to accommodate regional differences in road networks, it can effectively predict roads around the globe.
Source: facebook.com