Satellite images provide a wealth of visual data from which we can visualize in interesting ways. Land Lines is an experiment that lets you explore Google Earth satellite imagery through gesture. “Draw” to find satellite images that match your every line; “Drag” to create an infinite line of connected rivers, highways and coastlines.
Using a combination of machine learning, optimized algorithms, and graphics card power, the experiment is able to run efficiently on your phone’s web browser without a need for backend servers.
Learn more about how the project was created in this technical case study or browse the open-source code on GitHub.
We used a combination of OpenCV Structured Forests and ImageJ’s Ridge Detection to analyze and identify dominant visual lines in the initial dataset of 50,000+ images. This helped cull down the original dataset to just a few thousand of the most interesting images.
