Google is giving a major upgrade to its Street View camera system for the first time in eight years. This will not only enable Google Maps to provide clearer and updated photographs, but also allow it to create a data-rich, indexed view of the world that it can use in its search algorithms.
Google is changing its Street View camera setup from a 15-camera system to only eight cameras each equipped with a 20-megapixel sensor. This new setup will snap much clearer pictures that would give much more information to Google Maps users.
The Street View car is also equipped with two cameras that capture high definition (HD) photographs that could capture details of buildings and street signs. These information will be fed to Google's image recognition algorithm to index vast amounts of information that include signs, business names, and store hours.
Google hopes that the information that it will gather using the new camera setup will enable Google Maps to answer conversational queries that describe the location instead of giving the exact address.
"People are coming to us every day with harder and deeper questions," said Jen Fitzpatrick, Google's vice president for Product and Engineering to Wired. She shared that nowadays, the queries of users required a deeper, richer, and more detailed view of the world in order to be answered.
To aid in processing the enormous amount of information being collected, Street View is investing in artificial intelligence (AI) that allows the algorithms to automatically learn to read street names and numbers.
The influx of new information from the new cameras will also guide engineers in developing new software that would capitalize on those information, creating new features that offer increased utility for users.
In the future, Google will also employ crowdsourcing in order to maximize the feed of information that its algorithms will process. This will take the company one step closer to the goal of indexing the entire world.
