Thanks to Damian Spain’s recent photos of the Google StreetView car getting pulled over, we’ve all had a good laugh at some poor driver’s expense. But, taking a closer look at the sensor array mounted on the vehicle we also gain some new insight into the evolving immersive video capture method Google is using.

Notice the 4 tan/black sensors below the camera heads? Those are actually SICK Laser Range Finders, sensors which are used for 180 degree distance range measurement. Often used in the machine automation world, they are also a core component of SLAM robotics. You’ll see that two of them are mounted vertically, while the other two are doing a horizontal swath capture. What does this mean? Google is capturing 3D point clouds of the streets it’s driving down!

3D point data could mean a couple things:

• Google wants to scan your body to fit you for a new Super Search Suit (probably made of Spandex – the material of the future)… um, yah.
• Enhanced image post processing algorithms use it to better mitigate frame overlap
• Google is going to present some new textured 3D interfaces in GoogleEarth/Google Maps, beyond what they already model

Don’t confuse it with terrestrial LiDAR, this is much lower resolution and has a shorter range (over 50 meters it’s pretty much useless). Should be interesting to see the sensor array continue to evolve, it’s come a long way in just over a year.

Photos Courtesy of damianspain Thanks Damian!