Google Licensing Technology For Better 3D Cities

Google said this weekend that it had made a deal with Stanford to license sensor technology from a robot car. The tech, from DARPA Grand Challenge winning “Stanley”, is to be used by Google to better map out cities and their structures for Google Earth (and hopefully Google Maps), as Google hopes to catch up to Microsoft’s Windows Live Maps.
Microsoft’s pulled ahead in this battle with significantly better technology, and while no one’s noticed yet, they eventually will, unless Google finds a way to catch them. Google’s 3D modeling technology, in the form of SketchUp, while technically very good, does not scale to rendering entire cities, and that’s why Google’s kicking it into high gear, hoping to use the sensor technology to move faster. Google aims to use the same tech that allowed the robot car to map out its own environment for Google Earth to map […]

Original post by Nathan Weinberg