“A backpack version of the Street View camera system, the Trekker contains 15 cameras that peer out from a basketball-size geodesic dome. They snap photos every three seconds while low-power lasers collect 3D geometry data. Software later stitches the images together into 360-degree, street-level maps. Google staffers have traveled around the world with the Trekker on their backs and custom fit it to vehicles like boats and dogsleds. Recently, the company also partnered with Parks Canada to begin collecting imagery of national parks—many of which are remote and inaccessible even to Canadians.”
“This is the first Street View project that has really involved climate-change science,” she tells me. “But even though I believe climate change is happening, I’m also someone who lets data and imagery speak for itself. I want to bring this up a year from now, five years from now, ten years from now, because I do believe it’ll look very different in ten years. And if PBI wants to take it to a completely different area in the future, that’s great. I feel like I’m an enabler for access to technology that could the change way they map an ecosystem.”
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