How Google Street View Keeps an Eye on Things Where There Are No Streets (Video)

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It's not called Google Grand Canyon View, but Street View can show you what the canyon looks like even though there are no streets there -- or in the Meteor Crater or thousands of other places Google Street View Cars or tricycles or other vehicles can't go. How? With a 40 pound, human-carried version of the camera rig in the cars, complete with GPS and a "pause" button in case the human motive power system needs to take a break. But, asks Slashdot's Tim Lord, what about new, small cameras? Like GoPro? Don't they make the Trekker rig kind of obsolete? Well... Google's always working on "new and improved" everything, so the next version of the Trekker is likely to be kind of interesting.

Tim:So Steve, you are standing next to a piece of equipment which is called what?

Steve:So this is ourTrekker.Let me present it to you. So theTrekkeris our Street View camera that gets to go everywhere cars can’t.So it is designed for all that brown space or green space on the planet.It is the exactly the same camera geometry as the streetview cars and it is part of our effort to make Google Maps the most comprehensive, accurate and easy-to-use maps anywhere.

Tim:Now in a car you’ve got plentiful power, you have lots of room, and you don’t have to think so much about weight.In this case, you got those three things going on.How do you account for enough power, how long can it run, how do you do that?

Steve:So this system, what we did is we got rid of the steel as much as possible, replaced it with aluminum.We have also lightweighted the aluminum because we don’t have to worry about running into trees at 50 miles an hour with this.You can also see that we’ve shortened it and we’ve made it sit on top of a person, and down in this part of the box, we have a smaller computer, because we are collecting at slower speeds.And this is our battery box. So we have lithium ion batteries in here. They are rechargeable, they are good for eight hours.We store data onto to a 488 gig solid state drive. We have GPS location solution, just like the cars, and we have a navigation system inside of our camera sensor.

Tim:Now how much does the whole rig weigh?

Steve:So this is a light [expedition] weight of 42 pounds. It is something you notice when you have it on, but after a while, you just adjust to it.

Tim:What are some of the places that you have been able to go with this rig, that you couldn’t go with the car, or the other things you got the cameras on now?

Steve:So we’ve been to a lot of places while we were testing, every place you can imagine walking.Our first big expedition that was public was to the Grand Canyon.So we took twoTrekkersto the bottom of the Grand Canyon, spent the night, came back up.We did the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. We also went to Meteor Crater and walked into the bottom of the crater which is not accessible to the public, but thanks to Google you can go there now.

Tim:Is this light enough to climb on Everest with it yet?

Steve:It actually as far as expedition weights, it is about half of what a typical expedition backpack would be in terms of weight – it is 42 pounds.But the form factor is a little difficult, and so we would only go places that are safe.So the upper part of Everest, it is not suitable for that.Environmentally, this camera could go anywhere, it can go to Death Valley, it can go to the bottom of the Grand Canyon, it could go to the top of Everest, it would still function fine.We tested it from -30 degrees C to +60 degrees C.

Tim:How long did this take to develop?

Steve:So this development is like a lot of stuff at Google, it grew on the tails of our other Street View development. So over the last year, it has really come in to its production status.And we are deploying these all over the world.

Tim:Now with things like GoPro cameras and a lot of other advances in optics and obviously in storage, what would you do now if you were to rebuild this at this moment?

Steve:So it is funny, it is a really interesting question.So GoPro is a fantastic solution, but it is different than this.So people have come to expect Street View quality out of all of our imagery.These are custom lenses, these are 8-element glass lenses, super low-flare design, really hard to build – you can’t buy them.The sensors behind them are 5 megapixel cameras so we would increase that to a higher density camera that is more modern; here we are writing to a buffer memory but now we could write direct to disk, so we could get rid of most of this copper the camera electronics. I can probably reduce the weight by about 50 percent.I can reduce this volume by about 50 percent, and I can write direct to disk and probably cut the battery size in half.

Tim:Wow.

Steve:So we are really excited to do that.That will probably be our next generation of this.

Tim:Finally, could you show me how does a human put this on his back?

Steve:So we generally do this with two people, but it is something you can do with one.So it is 42 pounds, it is a little tippy, so we just stabilize it.Put the straps on.Do a little adjusting.

Tim:Everything but a water bottle.

Steve:So we actually have a water bottle, it is just not attached to the rig for today.Not too thirsty here.

Tim:One more question.How do you know that it is working as you are doing it?You are not wearing a headpiece or anything?

Steve:So good question.Normally we would have this.There is a USB tether to an Android device, I don’t have it on at the moment, but this Android device it is a simple Android app, started up it says connected to Trekker, and I can hit pause, or I can hit run, it is a very very simple interface. It will give me test images from all of the cameras, low resolution, and it will also tell me the status of the battery remaining battery life, remaining disk storage and if there is any problem with the system.But generally, we turn it on, we put this away and we walk.

Grand Canyon View

[Anonymous Coward]

That's Deep...

Re:

[JustOK]

i dig it

Re:

[BluBrick]

Holed on a moment...

Re:

[JustOK]

Crater love hath no man than this

Re:

[BluBrick]

... that a man layer down his life ...

lovely

[spongman]

yeah, that's fine. but don't you dare put a wide-angle camera on a quadcopter, or Schmidthead will get angry.

Re:

[MrEricSir]

More importantly the FAA would have some words with you.

Re:

[spongman]

why?

40 pounds carried?

[Sponge Bath]

I saw a sign on the rim when starting a hike into the canyon. It said something to the effect of be prepared or risk injury. The risk injury portion was scratched away and scrawled on top was "you will die". A 40 pound camera would certainly speed that process.

Re:40 pounds carried?

[simonbp]

Not if you keep to the trails, and stay hydrated. The vast majority of deaths/serious injuries are people leaving the trails or look out points and falling. Or not looking where they are going and walking off a cliff. Or just generally being dumbasses. If you obey the signs, it's perfectly safe, even with a 40+ pound pack/camera rig.

Re:

[Algae_94]

I imagine he just teleported down there then? He kind of had to get his gear into the canyon. It's either hike down, take it on a long boat trip with some major rapids, or helicopter.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

The average Slashdot reader is carrying more than 40 extra pounds every hour of the day and it will also speed his demise.

Perhaps Slashdot needs a warning sign.

stupid hipster-wish-they-were-geeks

[Thud457]

they prefer to be called Trekkies! [google.com]

Re:

[camperdave]

they prefer to be called Trekkies! [google.com]

Trekkies is what non fans call fans. Fans call themselves Trekkers. You'd know this if you were a fan. Turn in your card.

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[Anonymous Coward]

It is commonplace for mountaineering backpacks to be 50lb. And soldiers typically carry about 80lb of gear. For a prepared person, hiking the Grand Canyon with a 40lb load is still a walk in the park, both figuratively and literally! :)

Re:

[glenebob]

This could also result in some really cool Street View footage.

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[Pallas Athena]

Speed up? If I go somewhere in that canyon where I shouldn't go, and that action gets me killed, I'd rather die quickly.

Under water also

[whoever57]

I was playing GeoGuesser the other day and it put me under the water near Hawaii.

Re:

[whoever57]

Still better than $randomUnmarkedStreetLiterallyInTheMiddleOfNowhere. ;)

On an unmarked street, you only have 2 directions in which to explore. Under water, with no streets, you have a 360 degree choice.

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[a_hanso]

Next up: Google Drone.

Lightweighted

[Allicorn]

I googled a definition of "lightweighted". It isn't a word.

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[loufoque]

It's a neologism for "made lightweight".

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[CanHasDIY]

I googled a definition of "lightweighted". It isn't a word.

Correct; the word he should have used would be 'lightened'

Also... who the fuck is Steve? Not mentioned in TFS.

OT: Tim Lord?

[grasshoppa]

Hands up if you read that as Time Lord at first, followed immediately by the correction and disappointment.

Re:

[canadiannomad]

So, this video reminds me that I find it distracting when people start every sentence with the word "So, "

FTFY

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[jeffmeden]

This video reminds me that I find it distracting when people start every sentence with the word "So, "

A discourse marker like "So" is often heard when the speaker is in "dumb it down" mode and needs to structure their response carefully in order to not overwhelm the audience. The interview was done by Timothy, so you can imagine almost all of his footage turns out like this.

Please use no or another background music

[Morpf]

Dear /.TV please consider not using this kind of background music. It's quite distracting.

Re:

[ArcadeMan]

There's no background music because there's no video.

No such thing as a stupid question, my ass

[Anonymous Coward]

But, asks Slashdot's Tim Lord, what about new, small cameras? Like GoPro? Don't they make the Trekker rig kind of obsolete?

The cameras on the Trekker *are* pretty small, you twit. The rig not only records and synchronizes the view from several "gopro equivalent" cameras but it records attitude and position in realtime, and provides a way to record for long intervals without running out of storage space or energy (for the electronics). Strap a GoPro to your head and try to make streetview out of it some time.

Re:

[a_hanso]

But, asks Slashdot's Tim Lord, what about new, small cameras?

You mean the ones that are only smaller on the outside?

I don't like your altitude

[dutchwhizzman]

Also, the cameras don't record altitude or position. The GPS unit senses it and the computer unit in the lower part of the backpack records it on the SSD. The cameras aren't actually gopro equivalent. Their sensors have less pixels, but better sensitivity and color depth. The lenses are a lot less distorting than the ones on gopro cameras and have much less lens flare.

Google marketting

[chuckinator]

It's good to see that Google finally figured out this whole marketing thing, but I didn't see an MSRP on this particular gadget.

New version of portable street view camera?

[ArsonSmith]

Wouldn't it just be called google glass?

Re:

[Main Gauche]

actually a Beowulf cluster of Google Glasses.

Engine

[ickleberry]

They should put a Honda GX-100 onto that. Should have no bother pushing the operator and all the crap that's on that bike

Saw them in Venice

[Nuffsaid]

Venice, Italy, is another place where cars simply cannot go. A few weeks ago I spotted the Trekker crew on the stairs of Rialto Bridge, plus another crew filming them. They looked like they were enjoying the trek.
Some photos: http://fotoni.liviux.altervista.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=5182 [altervista.org]