The eyes of the Google Street View Car it’s not just its cameras. The real eyes, definitely more human, are those of Valentina Frassi, who has been working on the Street View project for at least ten years: they become lucid when she talks about her work. “I thought about it a lot during the pandemic – she says lowering her eyes, moved – we were stuck in the house but thanks to the maps we could still visit the places dear to us, perhaps far away, or relive the most beautiful holidays. Giving this chance to everyone is the thing that fascinates me most about what I do “.
Valentina, Google’s Street View Operations Program Manager, lives and works in Bergamo, one of the Italian cities most affected by Covid-19. From her words, but above all from her information about her, she begins our journey together with the car that appeared in Italy in 2008when he started photographing Rome, Milan, Florence and an area of Lake Como.
Over the past fourteen years, the Street View Car has photographed practically every corner of our country: we crossed it on the streets of our cities and observed it like a white fly on the asphalt. But never before, in Italy, has anyone had the opportunity to follow her for hours, to film her closelyto take a ride with the car responsible for Google’s 3D maps.
When the Street View Car parks in front of the Repubblica headquarters in Rome, it almost seems like a miraculous concession. Our travel companion, Alessandro, the Roman driver who has been taking photos for Google since 2014, gets out of the car. The car, a common small car, shows the signs of aging: the bracket that holds the cameras has some rusty parts, overall it’s not a car you would stop and look at if it weren’t obviously for those cameras. “Yet in this car you feel like a star – Alessandro says with a smile – when you go back to driving yours, it’s a problem: no one looks at you anymore”.
The driver will limit himself to a few jokes, funny anecdotes. He is not authorized to answer our questions about the technologies and operation of the car he drives. In reality, everything we need has already been told by Valentina Frassi, in the virtual chat on Google Meet that we did the day before. Now we just have to look with our eyes, and understand the effect of a “great beauty” tour seen with the Street View Car.
The interior of the car cannot be filmed. Another limitation. But at least we can peek and tell in words. Those expecting extraordinary equipment will be disappointed. The original cockpit has only two elements added by Google: a rather voluminous tablet, about 13/14 inches, through which the driver consults the map of the area that he has to photograph from time to time. And then, on the rear seats, a bulky hardware connected with a cable to the cameras on the roof: here the shots are stored and here is the famous “red button” that is pushed to start shooting.
We start the engine, let’s go. We reach the Gazometro, in the Ostiense district, perhaps the best-known iron structure in the capital. The sun is blinding, we’re in luck: the Street View Car’s cameras are designed to withstand extreme heat and frost but fear rain: water droplets can slide onto the lenses, compromising the quality of the shots. In short, when it rains, the drivers have a very specific instruction: do not go out.
Under the Gazometro, next to a sidewalk colored by graffiti, we stop to take a closer look at the turret with the cameras: At the highest point, the characteristic flattened blue sphere, there are seven 20 Megapixel lenses that shoot at 360 ° (only one of them is facing upwards). Further down there are two “HD cameras” that point to the left and right of the car to capture, in high resolution, the signs of commercial activities, for example, or house numbers.
Fundamental elements, added only in recent years by Google, are two cylinders containing Lidar sensors, which measure the distance and depth to the objects and buildings that the machine encounters along its path. Thanks to this information, a very precise three-dimensional environment can be recreated.
The technique that Google uses for its 3D is known, it’s called photogrammetry and the Mountain View company certainly didn’t invent it. But to this Google added the machine learning, essential to blur the faces of people and license plates, in short, all the sensitive details captured by its machines. Over the years this software has improved a lot, but it still happens to see uncovered faces or legible license plates. Anyone who recognizes himself in the photos, and would like to be obscured, can report it to Google which will do so.
We move from the Gazometro, towards the Colosseum. Stopping at the traffic lights, in front of the FAO offices, we understand how much curiosity the Street View Car still arouses. There are those sitting in nearby cars photographing it and those instead, crossing the street, say hello: “It’s something that happens very often”, driver Alessandro will tell us.
Many think that the images taken by the Street View Car instantly end up in Google maps, but this is not the case. The post production process, which also includes blurring faces and license plates, can take weeks to months. People are also certain, when they cross a Google car, they will end up in 3D maps. Instead, it happens that a Street View Car, to photograph a certain area, is forced to travel the same street several times. Only the best shots end up on the maps and for this reason many of the immortalized citizens may not be there.
The Colosseum is already behind you. We skirt the Circus Maximus and reach Castel Sant’Angelo, in this curious tour of the great beauty that the Street View Car will have already done dozens of times. Google updates its maps about once a year, but cities change face quickly, often there is a need to photograph some areas more frequently. On Street view there is an option, called “Time machine”which allows you to follow the same path in different years: it is curious to observe how it has changed and it is interesting, at the same time, to understand how much the resolution of the images has improved over time.
In Italy, Google hasn’t fielded a huge fleet of cars. This is why cars are so rarely seen. In addition to the machines there are the so-called Trekkers, the operators who take the photos on foot, a fundamental resource for accessing restricted traffic areas or areas where cars cannot reach. An emblematic example occupies a large part of the bodywork of the Roman Street View Car: it is the photo of Machu Picchu, the Inca site located in Peru and which Google photographed for the first time in 2015.
Taking pictures on foot is a more strenuous operation but it is definitely more sustainable. Google knows this – or rather it cannot fail to know – but for now it cannot do without machines with an internal combustion engine. The problem lies in the enormous amount of kilometers that these machines carry out every day, and in the simplicity of their parts. In fact, Google does not choose its Street View Cars on the basis of a partnership. The fundamental requirement, also operating outside the big cities, is that the cars can be repaired even in the smallest and most remote workshops in the country.
A green opening took place in Hamburg, and in Dublin, where the Street View Cars are electric and have joined the Air View project which aims to create an interactive map of the air quality in the city. A map to which Google’s cars also contribute, with special sensors.
Abandoned the usual chaos of the Roman Lungotevere, we head towards St. Peter’s Basilica. We turn right, in via della Conciliazione, back full of tourists. The dome is far away, to reach it you have to make a long pedestrian stretch, and we have no exceptions.
Google’s drivers must respect the highway code like everyone else: if they break the rules, they are personally liable for itAnd. In the past, a newspaper published a photo of a Street View Car in a double row, to denounce the wild parking lots in the capital. The driver who accompanies us was obviously marked: when we stop to eat a sandwich, he carefully chooses where to leave the car, discarding a portion of asphalt with faded stripes, the kind you never know if they are white , blue (for a fee) or formerly blue.
On the other hand, the sky of Rome to which we aspire is heavenly, intense and beautiful climbing the curves of the Janiculum, the Roman hill to the right of the Tiber, a privileged observatory over the city. The last stop of our tour is the Fontana dell’Acqua Paola, what the Romans simply call “fontanone”. And there the Google Car just doesn’t know where to look: on one side the fabulous seventeenth-century basins, on the other the roofs of Rome, with tourists who lean out to recognize and photograph the monuments.
Alessandro can’t resist, who takes out his smartphone. But he doesn’t care about great beauty. After eight years at the wheel of Google’s car, thousands of kilometers and all the opportunities he may have had to photograph it, the driver takes off towards that singular car that – as Venditti would sing – “if he mirrors inside the fountain”.