Neil's News

Trekker

11 June 2015

Four Halloweens ago I made my own Street View costume. This week I got the opportunity to do it for real. The Trekker is a backpack-mounted collection of 15 cameras. About every 2.5 seconds (depending on the operator's speed) it captures a 360-degree panoramic view. With a day's worth of batteries the whole thing weighs 18kg, which isn't too bad. But its centre of gravity is rather high, so that takes a bit of getting used to. The mast is also rather high, making branches a problem.

Some coworkers and I took Trekker out for a spin at a location just north of San Francisco. Looking forward to seeing the results on Google Maps in a couple of months. [Update: Here is is.] If you have access to interesting locations (and have permission to shoot there) you can apply to borrow one of Google's Trekkers. Eventually we'll probably just stick a Trekker on one of our dogs and send it out exploring.

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Legal yada yada: My views do not necessarily represent those of my employer or my goldfish.