I remember when Google Street View first came out, I was amazed. Any street was open to me. Literally, I could pick a country and the pick a spot on a street and start exploring. I can still remember sitting at my desk one day zipping up and down the some narrow streets in Taiwan. There were a few times where I wanted to break off the beaten path and head down some small alleyway. The program had its limits, obviously. Since the camera was mounted on top of a car, the only thing that we would given were the main roads. A person would have to actually go there to do some real exploring. The camera could show you the outside of a building, but it wouldn’t show you what is inside. Now that is going to change. Google has some new 3D scanning services tricks with the Google Trekker.
The new backpack made by Google is going to give you a fuller virtual tour experience of the the world. This is also good news for those out there who love to get out on their own two feet and explore. Google has found a way to combine this 3D scanning services device on the Google Street viewer with the trekking spirit. The scanning is now going off road to explore hard or impossible to drive places like buildings or remote spots. They have taken all of that 3D scanning services technology and stuck it in a back-pack. The thing looks like a robot getting a piggyback ride. All you have to do is strap it on and head out. It sounds like it would be quite burdensome, but it only weighs forty-four pounds.
It is ready for the hiker to start collecting images or the rest of this world that is not already mapped in the virtual world. Now, instead of just seeing the world from the main roads, you can take a look inside buildings as long as they have been scanned using 3D scanning services. Just think of the advantage having this could be. Imagine exploring a street on Google Street View and you happen to see a mall that you might want to go to. Well, how about just going in and checking it out. The Trekker could do that. All it needs is a person to put on the backpack and go strolling through the mall. How about going into some national park to an area that won’t allow vehicles? Nobody is going to stop someone with a backpack I don’t think. This thing also has a good potential for video games. Make your own world the virtual world that you play in.
This is what happens when 3D scanning services starts getting creative. Google seems to have a goal to digitize your world for you. So be on the lookout for guys with funny bulky backpacks. Be sure not to slap him on the back, though, or you might break the scanner.