At first glance, it seems that the Google Street View team is either trying to save the environment or dying to shed some pounds.
On Wednesday, a clearly-marked Google Street View tricycle was spotted heading East on Locust Walk through the University of Pennsylvania campus on the pedestrian bridge that crosses 38th street, according to reader Nick Sillik, a freelance Web and mobile developer.
“The group of college girls in front of me definitely recognized what it was and started dancing for it,” he wrote Technically Philly in an e-mail.
Sillik says he didn’t have a chance to snap a photograph, but says that the bike had the all the markings of the Google “Trike” (pictured above) that’s been making headlines.
The complicated-looking contraption is set on three wheels and houses a GPS and a three-dimensional setup of high-resolution cameras similar to the Google Street View cars that passed through our streets in 2007, according to a Google press release.
The camera setup snaps shots and geo-tags the photographs so users can have a street-level view of where they are going on Google Maps. The bikes were developed so Google could provide off-road access to landmarks, biking paths and places you just can’t park a car.
So far, only a bike trail in Monterey, California is live on Street View, but we have our fingers crossed that we’ll soon be seeing some Philly landmarks up-close.
Image courtesy of CNet UK.
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