Releasing the Map Matching API

Today we are proud to release our Map Matching API as part of our Directions API. It is a web service based on one of our open source components. You can use it to snap measured GPS points to a digital road network to e.g. clean data or attach certain data to it like turn instructions for biking trials. Read more about map matching at Wikipedia. Our Map Matching API is powered by the Apache licensed hmm-lib from BMW Car IT. ‘hmm’ stands for hidden markov model and indicates the underlying algorithm.

In the following screenshot and in these live examples you can see the Map Matching API in action. The black line represents the original GPS track e.g. received from a smartphone’s GPS. The green line represents the matched result, i.e. the part of the digital network, the black line is matched to:

The Map Matching API works through tunnels, bridges, complex junctions etc. and can utilize different available vehicle profiles. Even more off-the-road examples will snap correctly – depending on the chosen GPS accuracy:

We are confident that it is another helpful routing tool that can be used in production for your web or mobile application. If you find any example where our Map Matching does not work as expected, please let us know in the forum.

Use this link to sign up and try the API for 2 weeks and let us know about your GPS tracks and questions!