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Google's Street View Cars Are Now Giant, Mobile 3D Scanners (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Google's got a hot new ride. The company has a new Street View car with updated cameras, and -- surprisingly -- a set of Lidar (Light, Detection and Ranging) cans! Google doesn't have anything up officially about this, but Wired has the scoop on the new vehicles. The camera system upgrade -- the first in eight years -- greatly improves the image quality while simplifying the rig. In the main ball, Google is down from 15 cameras to seven, making the whole package a lot smaller. These 20MP cameras are aimed all around the car, and the pictures they take are stitched together into a spherical image for Google Maps. There's more to the cars than just the ball though: there are also a pair of "HD" cameras that face directly left and right. These are dedicated to reading street signs, business names, and even posted store hours; those images are funneled to Google's cloud computers for visual processing. The end result of the new cameras will be prettier Street View shots, with higher resolution, better colors, and fewer stitching errors. The better images should also result in more data for Google's various visual feature-detection algorithms.
Wired's report focuses almost entirely on the new cameras, but I think the the most interesting additions are the two LIDAR pucks that hang just below the camera ball. These are the ubiquitous Velodyne VLP-16 "Puck" sensors, allowing the to car "see" in 3D in 360 degrees. These $8,000 Lidar sensors are most commonly used in autonomous car prototypes, so to see them on a Street View car is unexpected. Don't expect the Street View cars to start driving themselves anytime soon -- as Google Street View's Technical Program Manager Steve Silverman says in Wired's video, the Lidar sensors "are used to position us in the world."
Wired's report focuses almost entirely on the new cameras, but I think the the most interesting additions are the two LIDAR pucks that hang just below the camera ball. These are the ubiquitous Velodyne VLP-16 "Puck" sensors, allowing the to car "see" in 3D in 360 degrees. These $8,000 Lidar sensors are most commonly used in autonomous car prototypes, so to see them on a Street View car is unexpected. Don't expect the Street View cars to start driving themselves anytime soon -- as Google Street View's Technical Program Manager Steve Silverman says in Wired's video, the Lidar sensors "are used to position us in the world."
...come to the rest of the cities that are not New Amsterdam, Bombay, Peking, etc?
The Goolag way. Be evil.
I can't wait until the day when their are sufficient webcams in urban areas where you can get live streetview streams with Google using it's data to stitch them all seamlessly together on the fly. I mean you could literally follow that cute girl home to see where she lives, without her even suspecting you.
I shot some photos for a newspaper and we had rules about using high-power lenses because it could breach privacy laws even in a completely public space.
Now Google is scanning the world. How far will they be able to inch down this slope?
I know of thousands of city streets that don't even have the first generation of street view yet. When, if ever, will Google get to them? Oh, they're great when it comes to medium to large cities, but they've practically ignored small towns. Even in cities of 5,000 to 15,000 some streets are missing and the ones they've photographed are from years ago.
It makes me wonder if self-driving cars would be practicable in small towns and rural areas. Nobody has the data yet. Even my Garmin GPS misses a lot.
did you shoot vaginas, who cares
...two LIDAR pucks ...allowing the to car "see" in 3D in 360 degrees. ... used in autonomous car prototypes, ... "are used to position us in the world."
Think TFA answered it right there. Knowing the precise position of the streetview car helps develop better maps for the Waymo autonomous cars.
Re 'because it could breach privacy laws even in a completely public space."
Depends on the nation and how they interact with photographers on city or public land.
Copyright on some fancy art work in a park thats open to the public but the art work is legally protected from attempts at photography for profit and publication?
Private ownership of some part of a city still open to the public with new photography laws?
A private sector security guard walking out onto public land and wanting to know if someone has permission to photograph their building?
Police trying to create a wider no photograph area on public land around a court building in a city? No sally port so public photography has to be banned in the area?
Police enforcing a wide no photograph area on public land around a jail?
Private security contractors moving far beyond their fence line onto public land to stop photography of a refinery?
Military police or mil contractors out on public land trying to make a photographer show id on public land thats not part of their base?
Lots of nations push the color of law and chat downs to try and stop or id photographers.
Later find out that its all on the web for many years.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
When they are done, they can render all of our sniffed web traffic onto a 3D map!
The company has a new Street View car with updated cameras, and -- surprisingly -- a set of Lidar (Light, Detection and Ranging) cans!
Who the fuck would be surprised by the company which owns Waymo using Lidar in updated Street View cars?
Hyundai Elantra is giant?
Perhaps the author should get out of Starbucks a little more often.
Since they killed the old interface and with it the "CityBlock" flash viewer, their stuff is only usable on high-end computers, and even there, the user experience is much worse than with the old viewer.
Webgl and all the newfangled javascript stuff are supposed to be better and faster than flash, what went wrong with it? What features does the typescript interface in flash offer that are not available with modern browsers in javascript + webgl? Or is it just a matter of new. less skilled programmers trying to do something different?
Also, they offer no access to older street view images (which have historical value), and for much of US, there are only low-resolution images from 10 years ago.
Who the fuck would be surprised
Apparently anyone who does not remember "2008", when Google cars first started routinely collecting 3D laser range and imaging via SICK laser scanners.
http://www.educatingsilicon.co...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... ("Close look at Google Street View car with Laser scanners and multiple cameras")