Oliver Kaleske

Wall·E

An OpenStreetMap Robot

Abstract

Wall·E is a maintenance robot I have been operating in OSM-DE since the end of. The edits performed range from simple tasks such as the reduction of repeatedly referenced nodes in ways to relatively sophisticated corrections in addr:* tags. Compared to other robots, Wall·E still has a relatively low total edit count (roughly 30k by early), but this also reflects the rather conservative editing strategy employed, which includes several precautions to avoid misfixes.

The talk will cover some of the technical aspects (filtering patterns, tools involved, safety measures) as well as the robot's history starting from xybot, an earlier OSM robot which served as a model for many of Wall·E's functions, and some remarks on the role of robots within the social system of OSM.

About the author

Oliver Kaleske is a physicist, working in software development, and has been an OSM contributor.