Google Maps Adds Drone Imagery 141
joshuadugie writes "Slashdot carried a story a while ago that Google had purchased drones for unknown purposes. Google Maps has now added new non-satellite imagery (at UT Austin, for example) when you zoom in close enough. Mystery solved!" I'd like to think that there really are (or were) drones over Austin, but would also like to see Google's explanation for the close-up images.
OMG I can see the RG6 on the roof! (Score:3, Interesting)
I kid you not, I can see the RG6 on the roof of the building across the street! (San Diego)
I took a look at my own building first to see if there were new, higher-resolution images. Sure enough, I could see the plastic conduit on our roof that carries the Cox cables to each stack. I think it's about a 4" conduit.
Just for yucks, I pan over to the building across the street, and I can see the bare RG6 laid on the roof.
Voila! I now have the photographs to accompany my presentation to the HOA about how stupid it is that our cable is laid-out orthogonally, as opposed to the sensible, star layout across the street. (It's so stupidly laid-out that it accounts for the 8db difference between my living-room drop and bedroom drop.)
See link below. (What the heck, privacy is dead, right?) This isn't even at maximum zoom, you can zoom in further yourself. I left it at this zoom level so you can see both buildings at the same time.
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=2414+Front+Street,+San+Diego,+CA&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=36.726391,79.013672&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=2414+Front+St,+San+Diego,+California+92101&ll=32.730802,-117.165676&spn=0.000842,0.001206&t=h&z=20 [google.com]
Re:You don't know if the new images are from drone (Score:4, Interesting)
Perhaps.
But then, until quite recently, I thought that driverless cars [slashdot.org] were not allowed, either.
YMMV.
Re:Drone or chopper: which one makes the biggest b (Score:4, Interesting)
colinnwn told you about fixed-wing drones...but a lot of aerial photography is now done with helicopter drones (less safe than a manned heli, they don't auto-rotate as long because they're smaller and have 2-stroke piston engines instead of turbines, but are much cheaper to run than a fixed-wing drone, and of course they can hover) or quadcopters (again less safe, can't auto-rotate at all) or hexacopters (can fly or control their descent with up to 3 dead engines, usually have loads of spare lifting power and are incredibly agile when unladen, but again if they lose all power they drop like a rock).
Helicopter drones that can do decent aerial photography start at about 4ft. long (and maybe 4ft rotor diameter), a quadcopter or hexacopter would start at about 2ft. in body diameter.
There are also a few people using zeppelin/blimp drones now which are quite safe, if one lost all its lifting gas and fell on your head you'd just get a bruise if any hard parts hit you, they fall pretty slow because they have the mass-to-surface area ratio of a Chinese take-out box. The only danger with these airships is they can get blown into power lines. The ones that can do aerial photography start at about 20ft. long.
Re:You don't know if the new images are from drone (Score:1, Interesting)
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts has the entire state surveyed by air every five or ten years (both with the USGS and on its own). The GIS data and imagery is available to the public at http://www.mass.gov/mgis/laylist.htm . Perhaps Texas has the same sort of program.