photoxels
It could almost pass off as just another student’s backpack, but this is no ordinary one. Inside it are cameras and lasers that generate photo-real 3D maps of building interiors as you walk the hallways and explore the building. Designed by the fertile minds of researchers Matthew Carlberg, Avideh Zakhor, John Kua and George Chen, this backpack serves the same purpose of the Google Streetview vans. [The team is also behind the technology that creates 3D views of major cities on Google Earth.] But while Google Earth uses GPS to create its 3D renderings, the backpack uses an inertial management unit (like those used in guided missiles) that figures out where the backpack is relative to where it just was. The cameras generate a four-direction view, and the lasers record the geometry of the world around them. The backpack is part of a larger effort to map the entire world, inside and out.
source popsci
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