Street View, the beloved feature of Google Maps, turns 15, and Google is celebrating its birthday by announcing a brand new camera that will bring its street recording service to new territories.
Previous Street View cameras were carried on the back of a camel, mounted on a snowmobile, and even taken into space. However, there are still many areas that the service has not mapped yet. According to the official Google blog, the company hopes to change that by shrinking the new camera down to the size of a house cat.
The new camera will not only be small, but weighing just 6.8 kg, it will be much lighter than the 20 kg Trekker mechanism currently used in remote areas. Rather than being a do-it-all device that is heavy as a result, this new Street View camera is modular that can be customized to allow surveyors to add and remove components as needed.
Google says this new, lighter design will allow Street View to traverse new areas like mountain peaks or the middle of a rainforest, or even just the narrower streets of a town. In addition, the new camera can be mounted on any vehicle with a roof rack and can be operated from a mobile device, requiring no other special equipment. Google says this will help it find more sustainable hybrid or all-electric vehicles that will work as part of its fleet and expand the service with new partners.
The new camera is currently being piloted. But the camera is scheduled to become a full-fledged part of the Google Street View fleet next year.
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