[Openstreetmap] geodriving results

[Alex Willmer]

SteveC wrote:

>So the past weekend a few of us piled in to a hire car to take some
>tracks.
>  
>
I've also gathered some tracks, they cover the part of the M1, the M6
East of Birmingham, part of the M42, half of the M5 some streets in the
North of Birmingham. Long distance stuff was gathered with a bluetooth
receiver on the dashboard (even worked with heated front windscreen!)
The streets in my immediate neighbourhood were by bike, receiver in bum bag.

The logging was performed by cotoGPS running on a Palm, extraction and
conversion using pilot-xfer+cotoGPS Desktop on Linux. I've not captured
any metadata. The GPX file is here:

http://www.alexwillmer.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/track-trial-20050405aw.gpx.gz

Observations:

- GPS accuracy is amazing, there's clear seperation where I doubled
back, even on narrow streets. For what ever map is produced by us, it's
clear wide roads and up will need capturing in both directions.

- Capture will have to be systematic for local roads, major roads and
motorways are few enough we could capture them in the course of travelling.

- As a simple method of keeping track it would make sense to do the
edges (major throughfares) and use them as a structure to define areas
that can be marked todo -> done.

- Simple algorythm for doing an area systematically: keep turning left
unless you've done that bit.

- For me at least, GPS batteries last much longer than PDA or laptop
batteries - use an adaptor

- It would be very useful to have a dictation program, audio notes
timestamped to the GPS.

- Capturing local roads by bike is effective for getting
urban-residential raw data, quite relaxing infact.

Questions:
- Following the SCO and *Alexis de Tocqueville *claims regarding Linux,
can we anticipate claims of copyright infringement?
- If so, what raw data and documentation (gpx files, notes, diaries,
sketches, audio, photos) should be kept to prove clean room
reimplementation?
- What data, if any, can we avoid gathering on the ground (eg points of
interest, street names, road designations, urban/rural land designation)?
- What data is available, if any, regarding organisational boundries
such as counties and boroughs?
- By what standard do we judge a road/track as a public road - ie I took
the rule of thumb 'follow the curb, if it's marked private or it's just
for parking, don't go there', is that sufficient?
- Anyone else doing this in the Birmingham area?