I've Been Mapped!

Yesterday, I went by Petsmart to get the kitties some food and a box of cat litter.  As I was getting out of the car, I happened to see this white car with green designs on, that had a tripod on the roof with a red ball atop it.  It was going down the street that fronts the strip mall where Petsmart is.  At first I though it was one of the local TV stations' "roving reporter" vehicles.  They're "manned" by a reporter and a camera person, and they go "live on the scene" to where the "news" is happening.  These vehicles have a satellite transmitter on the roof that telescopes up and down so they can uplink the video footage to the TV station.  But this car didn't have a channel logo emblazoned on it like those cars do.  Then I thought it might be a storm chaser for the National Weather Service -- some of them have mobile Doppler radar equipment mounted on the roof.  But the gizmo on this one didn't look like it might be a radar unit.  Then it dawned on me -- It was a Google mapping car taking panoramic street views.

If you're at all familiar with Google maps, you will know that you have a choice as to how you want to view the map of your chosen location:  As a "schematic" street map, which is like a printed road map; a satellite view, which is exactly that, a still shot from an orbiting satellite; or a street view -- which is an actual video shot of what you'd see if you were standing on the street. It's a 360-degree view that you can pan with the little map controls.  In order to get the street views, people drive around in these cars with a roof-mounted video camera that shoots a  panoramic view  of everything around them as they drive by -- the road ahead, the road behind, and what's on either side.  And I was standing in the parking lot by my car when this one drove past.



The thing is, when they "street view" someplace, these Google cars have to drive down every single street and road in the whole place. Can you imagine having a job like that? They probably go in pairs -one to do the driving and one to operate the equipment -- I'm sure there's more to it than just running the camera,  They'd also be using a GPS device to plot their position, too, so they could also update the street maps with new streets, road closures, new bridges, etc.  And they'd have to have some way to process the data to tell if they missed a spot.  I wonder what the job qualifications are?  Besides a having a valid driver's license, I mean. You'd have to really like driving/riding around in a car.   I wonder what kind of salary they make?  What would your job title be?  You know it would have to be something cool sounding, something that would look impressive on your resume like "video cartographer."  One thing about a job like that, though:  You'd have one whopper of an expense report to turn in each month!