Coming soon to Google Street View: the Grand Canyon.
This week, the team at Google Street View sent some of its members down the Bright Angel Trail and then out the South Kaibab Trail to collect 360-degree imagery of one of America's most spectacular, mind-blowing natural wonders.
Over the last five years, the Google Street View team has used all sorts of vehicles to help it collect imagery of places such as Antarctica, the Amazon and the Great Barrier Reef, including cars, vans, trikes and snowmobiles.
But to photograph the trails of the Grand Canyon, the team broke out a brand new piece of equipment: the Trekker.
The Trekker is a backpack with a round camera system sticking out of the top. Nathan Olivarez-Giles, a Wired reporter who was there as the engineers descended into the canyon Monday, describes the packs as looking like "a Ghostbuster's Proton Pack with an oversized soccer ball mounted on top."
It weighs about 40 pounds and is controlled with an Android phone. Its 15 cameras capture an image every 2.5 seconds.
Google Street View sent five Trekkers into the Grand Canyon to get good coverage of the landscape. They descended into the canyon Monday morning.
Now the Street View team just has to process the images and stich them together. The team says they should be available for armchair explorers to peruse in a few months.
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