Gizmodo: camera cars

Oobject Roundup: Crazy Movie Camera Cars

Wilson Rothman — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 20:45:00 EDT

In-car movie cameras are ridiculously complicated. Gone are the days where Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman gab while an unconvincing film loop plays behind them—now people at the wheel are really hurtling down a highway with bonus hardware all around. The Dukes of Hazzard vehicle above is one of the craziest examples, because it was built to stay on the road while the cab jacked back and forth to simulate those good ole' car stunts. Below is another one, apparently from the thriller Deja Vu. Our friends at Oobject have a lot more, 12 total. Go vote for your favorite. [Oobject]

Google Streetview Camera Cars Continue Their US Invasion

Charlie White — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 09:36:59 EDT

As promised, here's our second gallery of Google Streetview camera car sightings from across the United States. The fleet of Chevy Cobalts (and others) is invading the U.S., fanning out across the country while they take their 360° pictures that will end up in Google's vast photo database of every highway and byway. Check out the gallery of cars below, where each is labeled with its location, and then take the jump after the gallery and see a US map with pushpins inserted, showing you where each of the Google Streetview camera cars has been spotted thus far.

Thanks, everybody, for sending in your excellent photos. You're invited to keep sending more as you spot the cars, and if there are enough, we'll continue building our galleries. [Previous Gallery]

Google Streetview Cars Rocking Ladybug2 Spherical Camera

Charlie White — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 08:28:20 EDT

We've noticed small red cameras up on the top of those Chevy Cobalt camera cars gathering pictures from coast to coast for Google Streetview, and now an astute tipster has shown us which cameras those are: the Ladybug2 by Point Grey Research. It's a spherical digital camera, and a tantalizing tidbit of information is that the thing shoots video at 30 frames per second, and with nice, big 1024x768 frames, too.

Does this mean that Google is shooting video, not just stills of every street of the United States? Well, it would make sense, because those cars are already roaming the streets—might as well go ahead and get relatively high-resolution video and not just still photographs.

This camera grabs its video with five CCDs facing in all directions as well is one pointing straight up, letting it snag 75% of the full sphere. Then it sends its video via 1394 to a compressor unit that's able to stream those images at 30 frames per second. [Point Grey Research] (Thanks, Clem Taylor!)