Google Street-View Trikes Take to the Rainforest

25.08.2011
Google will leave nothing un-photo-documented. They’ve been everywhere: on the roads of the seven continents, the sea, the stars, and the moon. Now they’re getting off the beaten path and riding their into the Amazonian rainforest.

Google plans to document the Amazon and Rio Negro rivers using river boat mounted Street-View tricycles. Meanwhile the trikes on the ground will be going down dirt trails to find remote Amazon villages and to “wherever civilization meets the rainforest,” ad Google puts it. Google also plans on using its Tripod, which they would normally use to canvas your local Starbucks, but they’ll be taken into places like an Amazonian community center or school.

The project is a collaboration between the Brazil and U.S. Street View teams, , and the . FAS is a local non-profit conservation organization that invited Google and they are being trained to use some of Google’s equipment. So they can continue to share “their points of view, culture, and ways of life with audiences across the globe.

In the first phase of the project, the Google and FAS teams will pilot their Street View boats down a 50km (about 31 miles) section of the Rio Negro River. According to Google the area will extend from “the Tumbira community near Manaus--the capital of the state of Amazonas--to the Terra Preta community.” The images of the river and the communities as usual, meaning Google is not hoping for any , will be turned into 360-degree panoramas.

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