The app, designed by five people from Trentino with a passion for technology, gives the possibility to follow the route that best suits one’s physical condition and needs to reach any point of interest in the mountains, both in summer and winter , whether on foot, on skis or by bike
How many times has it happened in the mountains and you don’t know if the path they recommended is suitable for our physical shape? How many times on a trail have we failed to find the right intersection, got lost and wished we had some kind of navigator that could take us back to the correct trail? How many times have we wondered if a road was suitable for a pushchair? These (and many other) questions are answered by Mountain Maps, a free downloadable “mountain satellite navigator”. We tried it and met the founders, here’s how it works and what it’s all about.
What it is and how it works
Mountain Maps, through artificial intelligence algorithms, machine learning and Big Data analysis, can recommend a suitable route for the user according to their needs, in all seasons and in different disciplines (such as hiking, skiing, cycling), also taking into account with the ski lifts. The app works offline and, once opened, you can download maps of numerous Italian provinces. Once the map has been downloaded, it is possible to choose the most suitable route and customize your route by choosing the type of terrain, its location, access with a pushchair or wheelchair and, in winter, the difficulty of the slopes. Mountain Maps manages to accurately estimate and then elaborate tourist behavior in the mountains, always suggesting the most appropriate route, as explained by Mountain Maps CEO and founder Denny Calovi, who worked with five founders, all from Trentino , with a great passion for the mountains, technology and innovation: “If we are on holiday with a small child, Mountain Maps will recommend a route without steep slopes, without via ferratas, without particular hazards and maybe even suggest a ski lift to avoid an initial slope”.
The app can be used as a real navigator and can remain open throughout the journey (indeed, a kind of contest for those who walk the most will be implemented in the future): this way the user always knows where he is , or going in the right direction, where to turn and how much to finish. Mountain Maps’ job is precisely to analyze a very important amount of data in order to learn from it: “If – Calovi continues – we see that every time a route is deviated, then we understand that something is wrong, that the indications are not clear, and we are actually going to improve the data by interpreting these changes.”
The future of mountain maps
At the moment, the Trentino startup has signed a partnership with the Madonna di Campiglio ski area and with the Paganella to optimize, facilitate and make the tourism experience in the area more accessible. The team, they explain to us, is working on the implementation of new features of the platform and one of the future objectives is to consolidate on the national territory and grow in the Alpine market, involving regions of France, Switzerland and Austria be included in the app. “Our goal for the coming years – concludes Calovi – is to further improve all functions of artificial intelligence. For example, we can say to the app “I want to go to Trentino, stay low, I only have sneakers and I want to enjoy a nice view” and the system can recommend the best route by analyzing our words”.
Source: TG 24 Sky