Komoot Trail View uses over 15 million user-sourced photos and mixes in a bit ‘AI power’ to come up with a way of visually inspecting what the trail and terrain will be like.
The overall idea according to Komoot is that “Trail View helps the outdoor community to make better-informed decisions as to whether a specific trail is suitable for their sport and experience level”.
How to use it
First of all, Trail View is currently rolled out on the desktop version of Komoot. So don’t go looking for it via the phone app just yet.
The AI-curated pics show up as green dots on the Trail View map layer in Komoot. When these dots are clicked on – images that have been contributed by other Komoot users are revealed.
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Image recognition technology is used to curate images and filter out those that are unhelpful or feature “faces, animals, landscapes, buildings etc.” Trail View scans all uploaded images and shows only those with paths and trails.
Photo filtering
Although there are 15 million pics on Komoot submitted by around 28 million(!) users, after the Trail View AI has filtered out what it needs to filter out, approximately one million images remain that show trails and paths.
One million pics is still a lot. And the Trail Viuew function should only get better as the people submit more informative images of trails to help others to visualise their ride before heading out into a new area.
What Komooters are saying
Lael Wilcox, ultra-endurance cyclist and Komoot ambassador: “With Trail View, I can easily see if a trail is something for me or not. I can see if it’s rideable or if there are photos of obstacles that somebody took recently. It also means I can scout a whole area that I am not familiar with and get a feeling for the trails and roads I’m going to be riding.”
Rob Hermans, Product Manager Maps and Navigation at Komoot: “We are in a privileged position to be able to leverage such an amazing volume of user generated content to return a tangible benefit to the entire community.”
Jonas Spengler, CTO at Komoot: “Trail View is such a great example of how innovation and AI intersect to empower people to plan better tours with confidence.”
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