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Google Street View Gets A Trike For Off Roading

Oh, this is awesome. Google is taking its street view idea, well, off road. Due to the limitations presented by the size of its street view cars, Google has created a street view trike that can go where the cars can't. Not only that, but it is opening up the floor to requests on where it sends the trike for mapping.

Google Street Views, the feature of its Maps product that allows people to see a street-level view of places across the U.S. and around the world, is one of the more useful tools Google Maps provides. It can help show you what an address looks like so you find the right place. Not every road or place is friendly to Google's Street View cars, though. So, Google came up with something smaller.

Dan Ratner, Senior Mechanical Engineer, explains, "What if you want to tour the campuses of prospective universities, scout a new running trial, or plan the most efficient route to your favorite roller coasters in a theme park? I first started thinking about this question around two years ago. My day job is working as a mechanical engineer on the Street View team, but I do a lot of mountain biking in my spare time. One day, while exploring some roads less traveled, I realized that I could combine these two pursuits and build a bicycle-based camera system for Street View. The result? The Street View trike." (Check out the video below to see it in action.)

Now that Google has a more adept vehicle for providing street-level imagery, it needs some suggestions on where it should go. At www.google.com/trike, you can suggest interesting and unique spots in six categories, which include parks and trails, universities, pedestrian malls, theme parks or zoos, and certain types of sports venues. Google will be accepting nominations until October 28, which is less than two weeks from now.

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