Mapping The World, One Street At A Time
"That brings us to the vans' side-sweeping lasers. As the vans drive, their lasers constantly scan the road and everything around it, recording information that Tele Atlas calls the "first reflective surface." This includes the width, height and contours of every building the van passes.
This data, when combined with the images captured by the cameras, will help Tele Atlas create a 3-D world.
Three-dimensional digital maps already are common in Japan and Western Europe. But 3-D maps are still in their primitive stages in the U.S., where their quality depends on the type of device they're displayed on."
http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/08/12/digital.mapping/index.html
"That brings us to the vans' side-sweeping lasers. As the vans drive, their lasers constantly scan the road and everything around it, recording information that Tele Atlas calls the "first reflective surface." This includes the width, height and contours of every building the van passes.
This data, when combined with the images captured by the cameras, will help Tele Atlas create a 3-D world.
Three-dimensional digital maps already are common in Japan and Western Europe. But 3-D maps are still in their primitive stages in the U.S., where their quality depends on the type of device they're displayed on."
http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/08/12/digital.mapping/index.html
