techcrunch

The future of the Street View Trekker

May 24, 2013

We told you about the Street View “trekker” a few months ago; the amazing backpack-based camera system for adding Street View imagery from remote locations.

The folks from TechCrunch have been digging deep into Google’s technology (including great insight into how underwater Street View works), and they’ve spent some time looking at the trekker.

The backback weighs in at around 40 pounds, though it’s apparently a bit top-heavy (as you’d expect). However, humans aren’t the only vehicle that Google is considering for the trekker:

I asked Silverman whether we might see the Trekker make its way to the backs of other beings beyond humans, and he said that they are indeed mulling the idea of strapping versions of it to beasts of burden to help them continue to map the world in images. There are also plans in the works to mount it to remotely operated robots and small vehicles to help get imagery that otherwise wouldn’t be easily reachable by a human Trekker.

TechCrunch writer Darrell Etherington spent a few minutes talking to Google’s Steve Silverman about the trekker, which you can watch here:

Google is really making some bold moves with their various imaging technologies, and the continued expansion of Street View into new areas is only helping to make their products more useful. Check out the full TechCrunch article to learn more.

How the new Google Maps redesign came together

May 20, 2013

Last week Google unveiled a new version of Google Maps, which includes native Google Earth support without the need for a plugin. One of the other big pieces Google is working to include is a map that is customized specifically for each person. As TechCrunch shared, the idea was similar to drawing a map on a napkin:

When you draw a map on a napkin, you are automatically filtering out the most important information, and doing it with your specific audience in mind. The result is a simplified map, that involves maybe a few major routes, as well as smaller roads, and a prioritization that doesn’t necessarily reflect how important a road is to the general population.

The way Google is making it happen is quite amazing:

First, for a specific location the new Maps algorithm will analyze the entire set of people looking for directions in that area, and then highlight the routes that come up most often. Then from that subset they’ll focus in even further and weigh more vs. less important routes, based again on aggregated user data. They can see which roads are more popular, and then pop those out vs. the less important ones. Finally the less important ones are cut away, and you’re left with something resembling the hand-written map.

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That then informs the UI rendering of the Map itself, which still retains the street markers for all surrounding routes. Lines along routes important to getting there are made bold and lines on less important streets are thinned out, but not removed in case some users still require that information. It’s about drawing attention and changing perspective, not eliminating something altogether.

While this approach requires amazing levels of computing power from Google, it keeps the impact on end user’s computers even lower than past versions, since less data needs to be sent out.

It was an impressive and informative talk, and I highly recommend you check out the full article on TechCrunch to learn more.

How underwater Street View works

May 17, 2013

Last September we showed you the first set of amazing underwater Street View images that Google had released. They were absolutely stunning, as you can see in the example here:

TechCrunch recently spoke with Google about their Ocean Street View program, and came away with some amazing insights, including:

…the cameras his team uses for this project are very different from those used by Google’s other Street View vehicles. The team had to use wider-angle lenses, for example. Google’s underwater Street View camera has three cameras on its front and takes images every three seconds. One of the cameras points downward, because that’s how images during reef surveys have traditionally been taken. The back of the scooter features a tablet that can control the cameras.

During a typical dive, the divers cover about 2km and take 3,000 to 4,000 images per camera, and the team does three dives per day, each of which lasts about an hour. In total, the team has taken about 150,000 images so far, and Vevers expects this number to grow exponentially over the next few months. In the long run, the team hopes to create diver-less systems that can stay underwater for 12 hours or more. The technology is already available, but it needs to be adapted to the kind of camera system needed for Street View.

The systems cost around $50,000 each, and they’re already testing 3D cameras to begin to capture that kind of imagery soon.

It’s quite an amazing article, and it offers some great details into how this system works. Check out the full article, then explore our previous post on underwater Street View to visit some of these areas for yourself.