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NAVTEQ TRUE Streetview / Lidar Car Spotted

I just spotted one of NAVTEQ’s street view cars on the road outside the Verizon center near Chinatown in Washington, DC:

IMAG0204

With its wild rotating camera set-up, I figured I had better take a look around and see if this was the piece of niftiness behind Bing Maps’ new lidar-based 3D street-view imaging.  Found the following JUST AMAZING video explaining their 3D imaging process:

 

EDIT 11/13/12: I just found myself taking this photo of the Navteq car on Bing maps, a year after the fact!  I’m the silly looking fellow in the yellow shirt snapping the above photo.

Navteq car takes my photo while I take his photo.

Navteq car takes my photo while I take his photo.

21 thoughts on “NAVTEQ TRUE Streetview / Lidar Car Spotted”

  1. I spotted the Navteq car around midday today just south of Nashville on Murfeesboro Rd in Antioch TN. The woman driving it appeared to be frustrated/lost as she changed lanes frequently and looped around near the intersection at Una Antioch Rd.

    Hard to miss with the tall pod extended and angled mirrors catching the sun as they rotated quickly. If I’d hadn’t fumbled the iPhone video mode I would have some great pics to share.

    N4OZ

  2. And strangely enough, the Google Maps car was five minutes behind. They both followed the same path, passing in front of Kansas City BBQ going both ways…very weird.

    1. Navteq supplies Bing with map data. Not sure if it’s for streetview (refuse to install Silverlight to find out), but it probably takes some time for them to go through all the data and then make it available.

  3. Saw one in downtown Lansing in the early afternoon mapping all the streets. Came accross the car 4 different times while walking around downtown.

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