Digitising ancient maps using AI

Researchers at University of Pernambuco in Brazil have come up with a new way of transforming ancient maps in to Google satellite images. Digitisation of maps could inform people of how certain areas have been used and developed over time, including social and economic impacts of urbanisation, the team said in a study titled'Synthesis of Satellite-Like Urban Images From Historical Maps Using Conditional GAN' published in the IEEE GRSL journal. The team used an artificial intelligence (AI) tool called Pix2Pix which is based on two neural networks. The first one creates images based on the input set, while the second network decides if the generated image is fake or not. The networks are trained to fool each other, and ultimately create realistic-looking images based on the historical data provided.