R&D of Automation Tools, for Content Management.
I have been very fortunate to have spent the last six months being an intern at HERE Technologies.
In this post I would like to document my experience, discuss about some of the work I did, the importance to location services and everything I learnt in the process.
Let’s start with the five principles of HERE,
1. Be True.
2. Be Bold.
3. Win Together.
4. Learn Fast.
5. Give Back.
For all employees these five principles guide us and make working at the organisation that much more enjoyable.
HERE, is an open location platform company. That provides high quality location data and services to its customer. The company envisions a future functioning entirely on automation. An era which is defined by its digital innovations in the way we interact with the world or the other way around.
What is Content?
Content is essentially data that is being ingested in context. As any large machinery would, the organisation is home to a large amount of location data in the form of user submissions. Who are empowered to contribute to the creation of the maps that will be usual to everyone.
An application called Map Creator, is what the world can use to improve location data based on their experiences and submit relevant information about the feedback that is being suggested.
How does automation play a role?
Ever since people have begin doing things for themselves using their bare hands, ever so frequently they would end up improving upon the way they were doing things. To do so, we begun using tools to make our various survival activities easier to perform. Today, we have evolved to the extent that many of our tasks involve pushing a button and waiting for the job to complete. Hence, since the industrial revolution man has been ambitious enough to strive and make use of a tool called Automation.
Even today, in the digital era, we have created such machinery that can be made more efficient by placing an automative system in place.
Content + Automation
With steady inflow of data objects in a determined format, this moves through various processes and changes form for multiple purposes.
The information captured in every next form of content needs to be in sync with regards to whether the operation has resulted in a change in the map or not. There were plenty of times when due to some change or update in one of the intermediate engines, a large number of objects fall out of sync or one or more fields do not get updated as expected causing problems further down.
One of my tasks was to solve these issues, pre-emptively and before they can fail in the production line and complains ensue on the team. To do so, I created a patching suite which involved most the previously occurring issues and a simple way to extend it further as and when required.
These scripts were developed in Python or Java, and automated using Jenkins job scheduler.
HERE consistently has been able to deliver high quality location services to its customers and for reason that is most of the map moderation has been manually done. But with growing populations and ever changing cities and even urbanisation in places where there was once nothing, some burdens need to loaded off.
The company collects data in many forms, one such example are the Drive vehicles.
So one way to reduce the burden of manually checking for speed limits and road signs is to use these images and confirm what is actually at those coordinates.
This source of information was untapped until my team and I conceptualised and brought its benefits closer to our pipeline. By approximating the coordinates into a bounding box and checking the change suggested by user in their feedback, we managed to retrieve the images if they were available at the location.
Next we used an internal Inference API to recognise and confirm thee existence of speed signs and extract the confidence levels then ultimately legitimising the change in the map. All without human involve at any step.
Learning and overall experience
During my time at the company I learnt how to keep the code I write simple yet efficient and flexible. I learnt a lot about how organisations prioritise on teamwork and why good communication and transparency can boost productivity.
My firsthand exposure to Agile practices outside of bookish theories made me appreciate it even more. I was able to grasp concepts quicker when I asked more questions and was supported by my team members every step of the way.
I felt like a part of a larger purpose and was delighted for that experience.
In the end I still do feel that the worth of any time spent doing something must be rightfully extracted by the person doing it.
*Note: Drive Images are publicly available images and not HERE Internal drive data.
