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Google Tricycles To Map Footpaths For Street View
CNETNate writes "To advance its Street View service this summer, Google is poised to unleash the unstoppable power of human legs. Google will deploy pedal-powered tricycles — the company calls them 'Google Trikes' — mounted with 360 degree Street View cameras to map areas inaccessible by its fleet of Street View cars." The article indicates that the trikes will first see use in the UK, to map out public walking paths, but one anonymous commenter said: "This must be bogus — you are not allowed to cycle on public footpaths in the UK, I can't believe Google would have overlooked such a fundamental fact. Not to mention that the vehicle pictured wouldn't fit down most paths." PC World features the trikes in Rome.
Do they (Google) actually pay you to do that?
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
"The article indicates that the trikes will first see use in the UK"
He then goes on to link to pictures of them actually being used in Rome. Did the UK annex Rome?
Google Sherpa!
Soon there will be "Google Stuff in Your House" where a half dozen guys dressed head to toe in black with head mounted cameras will rifle through your belongings, cabinets, and drawers. So when you loose your cars keys, just Google it!
-- if you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine
I wonder if I should not make a space for a camera on my child's helmet... Any offer?
gooba? scoogle? scooble?
just attach cameras to aquatic lifeforms and let us swim the depths of the oceans from our computers... no chance of being stabbed in the heart by a stingray, either!
It looks like the mast has 3 lidar eyes on it. How does StreetView use lidar?
"This must be bogus -- you are not allowed to cycle on public footpaths in the UK
For UK, they will actually be deploying Google Beanie-Caps
âoeAny society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.
A Twitter update on this so we can all track that guy and his location and moon the camera appropriately.
.. when they're going to rollout Google Bedroom?
...until SKYNET uses this data to track us to our hiding places in the woods!!!
With as much animosity as google street views has already been met with
http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/04/02/1731231
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/13/0055234
I can just imagine what these guys riding around on bikes will meet up with - Can anyone say moving target?
"i lost my dignity on a slippery wiener"
I was a Seaworld in San Diego a few weeks back and one of these was driving around the various pathways taking shots for Street View. Haven't seen the data go live yet, though.
This is the 21st Century. Where's my flying StreetView camera?
As a bicyclist, I'd love it if google had decent maps of off-street bike paths, such that I could use google maps' normal direction-finding feature with these. I've lived in lots of cities with numerous such paths, and they're usually out of the way and hard to find if you don't already know that they're there. It would be great to have a feature that a) lets me find them, and b) tells me exactly how far out of my way I'd need to go for the added safety/pleasantness of using them.
Actually, extending StreetView to things off the street makes sense to me, for certain values of "things off the street" - there's a few businesses and the like I'd like to see mapped.
Example: I'd like to see my local zoo or one of our local museums set up so that I could use my GPS to find my way around - and being able to see some of the exhibits would be a bonus.
If *I* ran those places, I'd be begging Google to scan my site!
www.eFax.com are spammers
That would be a killer to try and ride with that much chain slack.
Likely the tension wheels are just temporarily missing.
It is the small details in photos (especially the street views) that cause the problems. The overall intent does not matter.
One day -- likely -- Google will have an anatomical map of the human body online. You know what this means...?
Google anal probe. Maybe they could call it the g-Oatse?
There are plenty of places that would be interesting to map that are closed to traffic but open to bikes. Many European cities have city-centers that are just so.
---------
No matter how thin you slice it, its still baloney.
History has shown that the human leg is an often untapped behemoth of energy, having in the past powered generators, submarines and, of course, deep space hair dryers aboard Red Dwarf.
Next thing you know they'll be reporting that Lister has been hired to peddle the thing around London. They tried to hire Cat but he was afraid being outside in the summer heat and humidity would ruin his fantastically perfect hairdo.
Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, For you are crunchy and go well with ketchup.
Google is missing a big opportunity here.
Granted that there's an eco-friendly message being delivered with pedal powered mobility. But the real problem is not putting a non-polluting vehicle on smaller paths, but putting a human directed camera system on smaller paths. This is a perfect job for wheelchair bound people.
So you may need a different vehicle design besides a tricycle and you'll need a small, electric motor. You'll still be running vehicles with a low carbon footprint. But you'll be able to put to work a huge group disabled people who normally wouldn't have outdoor opportunities like this. And I'm sure you'll find lots of tech-savvy folks in the mix too.
One could even argue that not designing the project to allow disabled individuals to perform the work is job discrimination.
... for my mobile porn data center.
Regardless of whether Google is going to use Tricycles, they're not the first to market with this feature. http://www.mapjack.com/ already has many many trails mapped out, things that bicycles may even have a hard time on.
Google totally dumped the Immersive Media VW BUG data footage and the company itself from Street View when the camera quality and function would not perform as advertized. Immersive Media then used the Google name to run up their own stock price and cash in for the Canadian executives. Google refused to even speak to the Immersive Media CEO after repeated lies and the stock games came to light in June 2007. Between that and Canadian Privacy problems this company is now trying to dig for clean coal or something? their stock is in the toilet. You can download all the docs yourself online: http://tinyurl.com/googlestreetdocs
Seriously
Google House View. This would be a map of the interior of people's houses made by people wearing backpacks with cameras mounted on top. This will be part of the new Google search that will help you locate items in your home. Google "where are my keys" and get back "Your keys are on the dresser." with a map pointing to your dresser.
Don't take life so seriously. No one makes it out alive.
awesome. To the best of my knowledge, GPS's will show rivers, but if you are paddling on one, it won't give you a great ETA. Google Rivers, on the other hand, could record average current speed and all the bends in the river to a genuine geocoded object instead of a dumb jpeg. That would be pretty sweet.
Did the UK annex Rome?
No, it was the other way round. Rome invaded Britain in 43AD. I think they've mostly gone home now.
Smivs on the intertubes!
I am within my rights to take a picture on a public street and then upload it to the internet. I am within my rights to publish my views, on anything, freely on the internet. I am within my rights to worship or not worship freely as I please. I am free to cast my votes for representatives in the various assemblies that pass and enact the laws of the land. So is everyone else.
But rights do not, and should not scale upwards so easily as they scale across society.
Google's ultimate objective, and they're danm well able to achieve it, is to map, index and photograph the entire world and put it all online for everyone to gawk at. One company. Worldwide coverage. Of everyone, and everything. No recourse. No appeal. It's clear that in the process of inductively scaling up the rights and freedoms we all enjoy to such gargantuan proportions, something has gone horribly, horribly wrong.
I am free to own a newspaper or pamphlet and to use it to express my opinions. Must it then follow that I should be free, if I had the money for it, to own as many newspapers as I like in order to disseminate my opinions?
I am free to worship in any religion that I please and ask others to follow me. Does that mean that I should be free to amass as large a host of followers as I like and have my will of all of them?
I am free to vote for my political representatives. Does this mean that I should be free to vote on every single piece of legislation they propose, or to propose and vote on legislation I or others demand at a whim?
You can't inductively keep scaling rights up and up. Eventually you will end up with highly, undesirable, outcomes. Google Street View is just such an example. I don't want my house, garden, neighborhood and face plastered all over the web for everyone to gawk at. You don't want it. Nobody wants it.
Yet we are all to accept the slow inductive argument that at each camera click and image upload, Google is always well within its rights. Yet the final outcome, colossal in its arrogance is repugnant to almost everyone involved. The inductive argument is invalid. No one should be allowed to do what Google are doing. Least of all a private corporation.
Rights do not scale up. The bigger you are, the less rights you should be entitled to. And the scope of your rights should be similarly curtailed. Allowing unfettered freedoms to the richest, largest and most powerful will only lead to them becoming overmighty, and we will all suffer for it.
May the Maths Be with you!
Just add some bells and a freezer and it can further add to Google revenue!!!
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
Why they didn't buy a bunch of Segways for it, is beyond me.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Next, Google autonomous aircraft. Big ones for overall views, little ones for street views. Small boats for waterways and coastlines.
Then, Google Humans. Face pictures of everybody on the planet.
Laugh now. Someday they'll be in charge.
I can imagine the headlines now - people riding those bikes will get beat up and ripped off of all that shiny equipment.$$$
The legal situation depends on the kind of footpath we're talking about. A Public Footpath is a specific kind of path that pedestrians have a legally enforcable right to use. It is not a criminal offence to cycle on a public footpath, but it is a civil offence against the landowner (i.e. the landowner can require you to leave, and pay for any damage you cause).
Normally it's a criminal offence to cycle on pavements ("sidewalks" to leftpondians) adjacent to roads, but not elsewhere. However it's fairly unenforced and in fact the Royal Mail more or less depend on postmen cycling on pavements to deliver the post.
You can get his helmet-mounted Satellite dish, and replace the dish with the camera.
Any Volunteers?
Street views of addresses I understand. I find it helpful to have a picture of where I'm trying to find.
Why would someone want this service? Are their vendors on the path like in World of Warcraft that google wants to map? I can see google maps giving directions like 20 yards exit the tree stump on the right.
"Only one thing, is impossible for god: to find any sense in any copyright law on the planet." Mark Twain
Do you have any concrete proposal, or are you just whining?
Any "cure" to this would be far worse than the disease, I guarantee.
Perhaps they should use something more like this.
[Insert pithy quote here]
Mechanical masterpiece? Let's see:
Disc Brakes on the front? Not needed unless you plan on taking this thing in the rain.
Suspension: Yes in the front, but glaringly missing in the rear, which you'd want for stability.
Safety: Didn't see any reflectors on it
Convenience: Not even a water bottle holder. I guess they could hand out a Google Camelbak.
googlecat!
Why is it ok in the public eye for google to do this, but when the gov't does this it's BigBrother and 1984 all over again?
That guy looks real fuckin' happy about it too. Blissful, I believe is the word.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
And I thought the source of the story from from the Onion!
Maybe they could take a tricycle into the Naval Observatory Bunker?
cylob already did this and it has a soundtrack:
http://cylob.blogspot.com/search?q=walk
Didn't I just read something about attaching cameras to turtles in the Galapagos...
From what I remember living there a few years back, Foot Path is a term as likely to mean "sidewalk" or "alleyway" as it is to mean "walking path in the wilderness". I suspect this will be used for both rural and urban walking areas, and that it will be allowed even in places where cycles aren't. (Even if it's just a "turn a blind eye" sort of thing.)
My Photography - http://ian-x.com
The Deathlings (comic) - http://thedeathlings.com
This is a great idea, provided that the contraption could be easily towed behind a wheelchair.
I shall be twittering this with a sigh
On someone's blogs and blogs hence:
Two paths diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less googled by,
And that has made all the difference.
--RFrostie1977
Mordor...a magical, mythical land where women are more rare than dragons--but where every man would rather find a dragon
Including the UK. And yes, this pisses me off because I live in a small town that is too hilly for bicycles, where disabled people are allowed to ride scooters on the pavement (sidewalk) but...no Segways.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Venice
The 'anonymous commentator' in the summary is being a bit thick. Here in the UK there are (generally) two kinds of path, a footpath or a bridleway.
Bicycles are not allowed on footpaths, but they are on bridleways (as well as horses).
If Google really are planning this, they'll be mapping well-maintained bridleways and tracks, which seems logical to me (although they'd better have a fast shutter speed as these tracks are bumpy).
However, you're probably thinking what I'm thinking - why not have horse-mounted Google cameras? That would be AWESOME!
Those are really not going to fit round a good number of medieval city UK footpaths, in the same way Hummers really aren't going to fit round medieval city streets...
they are too high, too wide, and too long for quite a few places I know of. Try getting around some of central London, here's the passageway next to the Lamb and Flag for an example. Here's a typical footpath from my home town, lots of hills in some places...
I work in a new town, and the really nice cycle lanes have bollards and offset fences where they intersect the roads, no way would that beast traverse them.
Nice idea, but a bit big. And in towns where the coppers are not so friendly, you will be nicked so quickly for riding it on a footpath. No bikes on footpaths here. They are for people, err, on foot.
I was wondering why a guy on a tricycle was going around my living room and then taking a dump and then took off. Must be the google houseview or google johnview project in progress.
1 new, only slightly used, Google "Skinny Scout", Act Fast!
The largest part of cargo in the world is transported by bicycle, mainly due to the developing countries.
Here are some more ideas:
http://bp0.blogger.com/_ZSRRivY4xlE/SE1hnHCFHEI/AAAAAAAABQI/Q-GBXSLbrZU/s320/funny_bike.jpg
http://bp1.blogger.com/_ZSRRivY4xlE/SE1hm1Wfq_I/AAAAAAAABQA/Z48UPKC_fVc/s320/cartbike.jpg
But real guys make their bicycles themselves:
http://bp3.blogger.com/_ZSRRivY4xlE/R4-pIsc8I3I/AAAAAAAABD8/ZYMBtpEghos/s320/wooden-bike.jpg
I think you'll find shipping is number 1.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
..I believe; footpaths, no way.
I wouldn't want to ride around on that thing in my part of the UK.
Bigbrother means that government (or something else) would try to watch you and keep an eye for what you do. If a clearly labeled camera-equipped car drives down a road once in five years or so, it isn't really surveillance, just mapping.
If you go to STASI museum in Berlin you will see surveillance cars masked to look like trucks, etc. so that people don't recognize them. The idea is to let people know they are being watched but not know when, forcing them to constantly fear that they might be watched...
If you can't see the difference here, I don't know what to say.
There is no such concept as "highly" public, it's either public or private.
What you mean is that you live in a street that few people have reason to visit. What makes you think that many people would have the motivation to see that street in StreetView? There are millions of quiet streets everywhere in the world, yours shouldn't be particularly interesting to anyone.
I would certainly object if only *my* house were pictured in StreetView, but if every house is there then it makes no difference. I have nothing that would make either the police or the criminal people especially interested in me. And if either of them had some special curiosity about me they wouldn't need Google, they could just as well walk down my street (it's public, remember?) and take all the pictures they wanted.
Yes, but if they recorded average current speed last year, and I'm checking google, now, wouldn't I need (what would have been then) the average future speed?
Get it? Current/current? Hah.
Seriously, though, flow rates of rivers vary enormously... at best they could give you a range of speeds, and the bends. Although you'd probably need to be deep underwater for them to give you the bends.
Get it? Bends/bends? Hah.
OK, I'm done now. Sorry.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
As far as I can discern, there's no such thing as a right "scaling up". This is just made-up nonsense!
Rights are absolutes. Either you have a right or you don't.
The *only* place a right ends is where it begins infringing on another right.
The reason you view what Google is doing as a concern is because you feel their otherwise acceptable activities begin infringing on your "right to privacy" when assembled into a searchable "whole".
The problem there is, we don't seem to have an inherent "right to privacy". It's certainly not spelled out as such in the U.S. Constitution or Bill of Rights ... and I don't believe any other nations grant their citizens an "inalienable right to absolute privacy" either?
I believe privacy is more of a desirable concept than an absolute right. We speak of "reasonable expectations" when it comes to privacy. There are philosophical arguments that a certain amount of privacy is indirectly granted based on other basic rights, for example.
But where is the line drawn in the sand? I imagine it's in a different place depending on people's "comfort zone" -- which varies by culture. (Americans, for example, tend to expect more "personal space" around them than those in Asia. What's "normal" to them might be seen as "constantly getting in my way" to an American.)
As we make use of new technologies, we have to balance their usefulness with their potential for reducing privacy, and keep making adjustments to what we'll allow and what we won't.
I happen to feel that as long as Google freely gives away the information they collect, they aren't doing anything wrong by collecting "street view" images or any other mapping activity involving capturing video in public places. It gets much more "iffy" if you talk about this information being sold commercially, and access to it restricted.
I think Google have had a trial run of this technology around Shoreline Lake, which just happens to be a stone's throw away from their main campus. I noticed this a few weeks ago and thought it was odd they'd managed to get a car onto the paths. Then I noticed the bike helmet:
http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=37.433176,-122.086537&spn=0,359.987683&z=17&layer=c&cbll=37.433197,-122.086733&panoid=Ds8N09-bAtoW_kNY2g348g&cbp=12,32.78,,0,17.17
Yes, UK. Weird. Last I heard, it wasn't legal to ride a bike on a footpath here, much less a trike with cameras and stuff attached.
In Korea for the Daum maps service(http://local.daum.net/map/index.jsp), which launched a roadview service late last year, they have used a backpack mounted system so that they could include hiking trails, hiking is very popular here. The already have most of the little paths and things on the system.
Korea is one of the few places where google is struggling for market share, and daum is working to keep it that way. Remember innovation sparked by competition?
What's incredible is that none of you realize the true purpose of
all this street-mapping. It's not really being done by Google,
it's being done by "no such agency", and all you chumps are
sitting there actually believing the cover story they cooked
up. This is hilarious, given that many of you actually believe
you're intelligent, when you're eating the whole line of bs,
hook, line, and sinker.
The P3nt4g0n knows that urban combat has a casualty rate which is too high to be acceptable. So, they're creating a database of urban terrain, pretending it's for Google's use. In the end, robots will use this database to wage war against humans within the US. Laugh now, but you won't be laughing when it happens.
I took pictures of this last year, old news. http://tastypint.blogspot.com/2008/10/google-street-view-rickshaw.html I wish I had a voice on the Internet.
Send people around to every local business to log the hours that they are open. That way, if I were to type "drugstore 9xxxx" or "grocery 9xxxx" or "chinese buffet 9xxxx" it would display useful information. Typing the above queries into Google Classic will produce marginal results, with links to, say the corporate home page of Rite Aid. The "Search Nearby" feature of Google Maps is completely brain dead, if you start at your home and type in "24 hour drugstore" you'll get one 20 or more miles away.
"...you are not allowed to cycle on public footpaths in the UK"
Yes you are. The Highway code says "You MUST NOT cycle on a pavement" but doesn't mention footpaths. A pavement is adjacent to the road (so it will have been done by Google already), a footpath isn't.
In Scotland a pedal cycle is deemed in case law to be an 'aid to pedestrianism' and is consequently permitted anywhere where walking is permitted. Furthermore the Land Reform Act 2003 explicitly grants the right to cycle more or less anywhere, with very limited exceptions.
The English are a curious, backward, primitive people with curious views about private land, but they don't (fortunately) constitute the whole of the United Kingdom.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
One of these things was riding around the Penn State campus last summer.
That dude really looks happy about the whole deal. Hope he's getting a lot of money. Where can I find out more about the technology? I used the pictures on a recent trip and I knew exactly what the hotel was going to look like before I arrived.
"There are good ships, and there are wood ships, the ships that sail the sea. But the best ships are friendships, and ma
I have a mono wheel, is it all right?