Earlier this year, Facebook launched their new AI detected feature service MapWithAI along with their custom version of the iD editor, RapiD. Kaart quickly adopted RapiD into our road vectorization workflows and saw impressive efficiency and data accuracy increases for those projects by being able to focus on the quality of the edits with the time usually spent on vectorization. We recognized the potential impact on data coverage and editing efficiency but noticed a need for an integration with JOSM.

It’s a known problem that web based editors like RapiD are difficult to use where an internet connection is either unstable or is slow enough that it brings the editor to a halt. Incorporating the MapWithAI data into JOSM would facilitate use of the data in parts of the world where a network connection may be unstable.

In September, one of Kaart’s engineers, Taylor Smock, started working on a project to create a JOSM plugin that would utilize the MapWithAI service. With some technical support from the Maps team at Facebook, we have been able to create a plugin at feature parity with RapiD but with some JOSM-esque additions.

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