If you've ever wanted to drive a Street View car to help Google improve its world-mapping service, there's no longer any need to. Street View will now accept imagery captured on your Android smartphone.
The announcement was made by Stafford Marquardt, Product Manager at Google Maps Street View. All that's required to start contributing is the latest version of the Street View app on Android and a smartphone with support for ARCore. As Marquardt explains, "Using our new connected photos tool in the app, you can record a series of connected images as you move down a street or path."
Once captured, the images can be published via the app and Google's servers will automatically carry out the required rotation and positioning to create a series of connected photos. After that, they will appear on Street View for all to see for the location you captured.
The ability for anyone to add content to Street View is good news for both Google and users. Google can only operate so many vehicles, bikes, and people walking around with cameras capturing every street. Now it has millions of people able to do the leg work. Marquardt also points out that until now, adding content to Street View required a special 360-degree camera and they weren't cheap, especially if you wanted to attach one to your car.
For now, the connected photos feature is available in beta for ARCore-compatible Android devices in Toronto, Canada, New York, Austin, Nigeria, Indonesia, and Costa Rica. Google is promising to expand to more regions soon.
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