DigitalGlobe joins hands with Uber

Uber will soon deploy DigitalGlobe`s high-resolution imagery to improve its pickup and drop facilities. DG has entered into a multiyear global partnership with Uber to supply the company with high-resolution satellite imagery. Over the past few years transportation app like Uber has revolutionized the cab experience, making the experience as simple and comforting as possible. These days office commuters are more dependent on these cab hiring apps more than the public transport itself, the only reason being reliable on-time pick up and drop facility. The back-end technology that drives Uber`s reliability is highly developed mapping technology. The ride-hailing company brought Mapmaker Decarta, a SanJose California-based mapping company, to improve its mapping intelligence.  The partnership of Uber with DigitalGlobe was fuelled by the ever-increasing presence of Uber in countries like India and China, where roads are confusing, congested, and difficult to locate. The partnership will definitely improve Uber`s location accuracy, as DigitalGlobe is a very big name in the world of commercial satellite imagery. With the resolution restriction being uplifted by the U.S. government the company has the liberty to sell commercial satellite imagery at resolution as high as 12 inches. DigitalGlobe`s high resolution can provide extremely high-resolution imagery can provide very high level of details, revealing the changing topography of the modern city with clarity and currency that might help in crucial things like route planning and navigation. The refresh rate of DG is very high so very minute details like new lane openings, construction projects, and re-purposing of lanes into bus or carpool-specific routes, all can show up in DG maps much before any government website or official city maps. A few years down the line this partnership is expected to play a very important role when Uber launches self-driving cars. For an automated driving system, a highly updated layout of the congested cities is crucial. In other words, it can be said that this partnership will improve Uber`s God View, which is an internal feature of the company that allows it to pinpoint the location of its drivers and customers whenever they are using the app. Uber will use DG`s technology to access location intelligence and images that will help in the identification and improvement of the pickup and drop-off points. DigitalGlobe has spent a decade improving Geo-spatial intelligence, Social networking giant Facebook also entered into a partnership with DG to prepare the World population density map, this partnership will help Uber understand the transportation environment better and ultimately make life easier for daily commuters.

Image courtesy:DigitalGlobe

In a recent TED talk Travis Kalanick, the CEO and co-founder of Uber had mentioned that with the technology in our pocket and a bit of smart management we can reclaim our cities resulting in increase in parks and greenery, decrease the carbon dioxide emission. We are in an era of huge climate change, so reduction of carbon footprint seems to be a natural solution of a global problem like climate change.