Everything that you've seen on Street View so far has been from public places. But with our new Partner Program, we've been working directly with various partners and are able to collect imagery of private destinations like race tracks, universities and amusement parks.
For some of these spots, like a race track, our Street View cars are a perfect fit. But to be able to explore more pedestrian-focused areas, such as a campus, we're using a new platform called the trike, a bicycle-based version of a Street View system. With the trike, it gets us almost anywhere the car doesn't fit. You can see that the trikes resemble an ice cream cart a bit:
It uses the same camera system we have on our cars, but we've transplanted it onto the trike. It's built onto a 3-wheeled bicycle base and we've added a few of our own tweaks. We've gone through a few versions to get to where we are now; the first one came in at 500lbs, and the newest version has slimmed down to 300lbs. Believe me, our riders are very happy about that.
I think one of the most memorable experiences from working with this first batch was getting to go around the track at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca with the GT and Le Mans prototypes from the Monterey Sports Car Championships last year.
Grab the pegman and check out all these cool spots. If you happen to work at a location that you think would be a great fit for the Partner Program, be sure to visit the
Content Central Blog to find out more about how you too can be featured in Street View.
Posted by Wendy Wang, Operations Program Manager
Follow
No comments :
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.