Mappo

The interior space of the car is named by car manufacturers: “Living Room”. This space is rapidly changing, and it offers an extraordinary riding experience for all passengers. In 2021, more than 50% of new cars will be equipped with a SIM. Therefore, the connected car will supply diverse navigation opportunities, tour and journey guides, Emails, AR concerts within the car, advertisement services, podcasts, indications and notifications for electric charging, games and so on. The future car will be equipped with 2-3 online screens. Not only the driver, but all passengers will benefit from it.  

The problem and the solution

Mappo’s content improves the riding experience. The company supplies audio and video In-car Infotainment for the automotive industry.

Mappo supplies family, geo-localized content - audio and video- for car manufacturers, that moves as the car rides. 

Mappo’s content is designated for the connected car, which is equipped with a SIM and in several years, it will fit the autonomous vehicle as well. Car manufacturers are in need of additional content for the driver and the passengers, but they are not interested in producing this content independently and so they approach external companies.

Mappo meets a real need of car manufacturers in which they invest extensive sums: to create an improved riding experience that will assist in the car branding and its marketing and selling. All car manufacturers invest in development, research and resources in the driver’s and riders’ riding experience.

With the algorithm, Mappo can supply these needs to every car manufacturer everywhere around the world.

Mappo is the first company in the world that uses all types of cultural content created along human history, to extract maps out of them. The company’s raw materials are a gigantic database of cultural content: books (history, children literature, cooking books, novels, architecture etc etc), music (from the Beatles in England to Aznavour in Paris and even songs about the Kinneret), movies (Experience ‘Rocky’ on top of Philadelphia’s map) or TV shows (Breaking Bad in Albuquerque or House of Cards in Washington D.C.)

The company creates, with the algorithm developed by the company, geo-based content maps.

The company’s cutting-edge algorithm can “read” extremely broad texts, extract quotes that mention a specific location, and place them as a map layer.   

IN-CAR INFOTAINMENT market

The dramatic changes in the automotive industry created a relatively new domain, highly developed by the car industry: In-car Infotainment.

Two key technological developments recently have led to new business opportunities in the car industry, on a scale of billions of dollars:

1. The integration of internet and cars. Most new cars are already equipped with SIM.
2. The introduction of additional screens to cars as a result of the car’s online connectivity.

It is worth mentioning that: The car’s app is available both in an android and iOS version for each user, regardless of the type of car used.

The content is engaged in audio version and video.

Mappo supplies the tourist unique content: It is not a Wikipedia-style content but tailor-made content in formats like stories, literature, architecture, content for children, food, history, or music that results into a unique experience. Digital world has thousands of tourism app supplying information but there is no application in the world that supplies an experience like Mappo learned and can supply.

Influence over the In-car Infotainment

Mappo supplies car manufacturers with a product that meets their needs: 1 – new market opportunities 2 – branding 3 – differentiation, 4 – family content.

The usage of cultural content over the car’s screens and sound system completely changes the riding experience and it has the potential to change the revenue model of car manufacturers that currently operate with tight profit margins. Mappo’s product contributes to the change of the product’s definition manufacturers offer to their clients. This innovative product will place the manufacturer, in addition to the car itself, as an innovative, user -friendly company offering a family experience.

Mappo knows how to equip each city in the world, in no time, with local content. Moreover, the company will be able to sell data for municipalities or local tourism companies. It is worth mentioning that prior to the decision to focus on the car industry, the company has worked with the Barcelona-based company TURISME and has supplied its hundreds of thousands of customers with dedicated excursion plans created by Mappo. 

Technology

The company has developed a global platform, which enables to connect all types of content (texts, songs, TV shows dialogues, movies) and their location, based on where they occur. This connection, creates an extensive database, including content-based maps with multiple points of interest (POI).

This database creates a layer over a digital map – both within the app and on the website. This layer is created by a unique GEO-REFERENCING algorithm. It is important to mention that it is a significant technological challenge, including the analysis of the texts, extracting the locations, and accurately placing them over the map.

Products and technologies that already exist

1. User-generated content platform: The platform enables each user to manually create geographical content and to enrich it with additional content related to location, a creation, or a creator and to upload movies and pictures. It is a web-based platform, and it is responsive for all types of screens.

Users can also upload content such as routes which will be reviewed by the company to ensure the reliability and quality.

2. Geo-Referencing engine (English): The company has developed an engine which is able to process texts, recognize high-resolution location pins (a street, a site, a monument, a neighborhood, a building, a city, a district, a country) with a well-trained model for texts in a variety of genres. The engine is able to analyze entire books in English and place location pins over the Earth’s map in a 90% accuracy.
3. Data API: A secured content distribution and clients’ management system for B2B customers who can get the content produced by the company for various avenues and usages within their own product.
4. Management, demonstration and tagging of content: The system enables editors to watch the content created by the engine, review it and tag it, to improve and contribute to the engine’s learning and to extract any irrelevant content. With the system, it is possible to build databases that can improve the engine and create autonomous learning through AI neural networks.

Technological development program for the upcoming year

• A route-generation engine that can create real-time routes according to personally tailored points of interest per user.
•  Saliency: The company has become aware to the fact that the current algorithm ‘extracts’ phrases which some will not interest the end-user. The company acknowledges that a more subtle, distinct, and sophisticated work is needed.

The main target is to achieve significant technological development that understands the text and enables to choose phrases and to rank them according to their importance in the text and the level of interest they generate. By accomplishing this goal, the company will be able to precisely sort and chose only ‘interesting’ data and every text including the mentioning of a location, without distinguishing the level of interest it will generate.

It is the toughest technological challenge the company has taken upon itself. This operation is led by two scientists from IDC Herzliya: Prof. Ariel Shamir, Dean of Efi Arazi school of Computer Science and Dr. Kfir Bar, a world-class expert for NLP. This operation brings Mappo to operate within the AI sphere.

The ability to “understand” a text and to choose outstanding phrases is at the forefront of NLP. A success in this unique domain may bring the company an extraordinary value and a great technological edge.

• In 1.5 years, the platform is planned to generate approximately 200,000 content items on a global scale, in a variety of fields and in hundreds of cities.
• The technological development creates a potential for two patents: 1 Geo-Referencing; 2 - (and the most promising!) - Saliency and 3 – Customization and personalized routes per user. 

Patents