Google improves Street View with off-road tricycle cameras

by Steven Mostyn - Mar 1 2011, 15:43

Show Street View to anyone who’s never experienced the wonders of its interactive exploration, and watch their jaws go slack in amazement. However, watch that amazement fade slightly when they realise that Google’s mapping tool simply isn’t evolved enough to go anywhere and everywhere.

However, Google is looking to improve Street View’s coverage all the time, and this week it has revealed a fresh approach that enables its 360-degree cameras to shoot off-road areas previously inaccessible to its fleet of roaming cars.

In an effort to expand its content database and capture imagery in more remote places, Google has added camera-equipped tricycles (we’re not making this up) to said fleet of vehicles—with a view to snapping hard-to-reach places such as along hiking trails, the inside of amusement parks, along beach-front piers and into picturesque gardens.

Although Street View addicts will likely be thrilled at the prospect of taking the interactive camera off-road, they should spare a thought for the lactic acid building up in the calf muscles of those poor Google employees charged with gathering the necessary images.

Specifically, each Street View tricycle weighs a hefty 250 pounds, is around nine feet long, supports an ungainly seven-foot high camera mount, and can hardly be called the ideal mode of transport for traversing potentially awkward terrain.

The camera tricycles were the brainchild of Google engineer Daniel Ratner, who came up with the idea after visiting the beautiful but tightly confined cobblestone alleyways of Barcelona and realising how many places cannot be reached by Street View cars.

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