Google CityBlock Project

The Google CityBlock Project funding began in February of 2003. The project involves myself (Marc Levoy) and two PhD students, Augusto Roman and Gaurav Garg. Our first task was to take the video-based panorama creation technology we had demonstrated in our November 2002 technical talk (pictured above), and make it sufficiently robust to permit high-resolution, large-scale, hands-off digitization of commerical districts from a moving vehicle. After several months of trials, we have identified two key technical hurdles that must be overcome before the technology can be scaled up along the three axes italicized above.

The project will cover every commercial street in the US. Estimates from the project contend that it would take 20 vehicles 20 days to capture the 2.4 million miles of roadway on film. (via Blackbelt Jones -- see the comments there for some news about similar projects in other countries.)