HERE Technologies relies on accurate and timely Points of Interest (POI) data to maintain map freshness for its global automotive and logistics partners. This project develops an AI-powered Places Data Pipeline that automates POI ingestion, normalization, and change detection from brand-owned APIs. Using Scrapy and Playwright for scalable data retrieval and Gemini-based Large Language Model (LLM) parsing for schema alignment, the system standardizes diverse API outputs into a unified GeoJSON format. A rule-based change detection engine identifies true business updates with about 90% precision, significantly reducing manual QA. By automating schema mapping and update verification, the solution is projected to save HERE approximately $200,000 annually in operational costs while improving data consistency, scalability, and traceability. This pipeline establishes a robust foundation for sustaining real-time POI accuracy across HERE’s global map ecosystem.
Watch the team present this project at 02:18:10 in the session recording here.
Keywords: data pipeline, web scraping, location intelligence, API automation, POI standardization, change detection
Faculty Advisor
Sanjay Boddhu is the Head of AI/ML Engineering at HERE Technologies, a global leader in location data and platform services. He has over 15 years of experience in leading and mentoring diverse and distributed teams in developing state-of-the-art applications and solutions in the domains of Computer Vision, Image Processing, Natural Language Processing, Predictive Analytics, and Data Science Strategy/Modeling. He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering from Wright State University and is a Senior Member of the IEEE.
At HERE, he is leading the UniMap Automation initiative, which leverages AI and machine learning to transform raw spatial and nonspatial data from various sources, such as imagery, probe data, car camera feeds, lidar, and IoT data, into an actionable, navigable digital map that is updated in near real-time. He is also responsible for designing and deploying algorithms at scale, managing product roadmaps and stakeholder engagements, and driving innovation and excellence in map automation and computer vision. His mission is to revolutionize how maps are created and maintained, and to enable new use cases and opportunities for autonomous and robotic mobility.