Swedish street-level imagery platform Mapillary has launched a demand-driven marketplace for street-level images and road data to update maps on demand.

The marketplace will allow map companies and other providers to request and purchase the service of capturing street-level images and data from any location in Europe and the US.

Mapmakers are required to post mapping requests across the US and Europe on the Mapillary Marketplace to buy map data.

Mapillary co-founder and CEO Jan Erik Solem said: “The whole mapping scene is changing rapidly and more players than ever need detailed and up-to-date maps.

“These days, it’s not just humans that need maps; it is autonomous vehicles, drones, delivery fleets, last-mile solutions, micro-mobility providers, and many more.

“Each of these needs to understand what streets look like on a detailed level and they need a scalable way to do that. That’s where the Mapillary Marketplace comes in.”

Anyone can browse and complete mapping tasks that have been posted by companies and others on the Mapillary Marketplace.

All images uploaded by mapping companies and others on the marketplace are processed with computer vision, which blurs sensitive information such as faces and licence plates.

The new technology automatically recognises 43 different object classes such as traffic signs, manholes, fire hydrants and utility poles, before positioning them on the map.

“These days, it’s not just humans that need maps; it is autonomous vehicles, drones, and delivery fleets.”

Solem said: “We’re the only organisation to publish map data from street-level images in this way, available for anyone with clear usage rights and commercial terms.

“That’s why people and companies bring images to the Mapillary platform, because they need the data from the imagery and this is the only scalable way for them to access it.

“Recently, we’ve had a lot of companies ask for map data in locations where there is no imagery, and that’s why we’ve built the marketplace.”