Friday Fun: A Street View Car Made Of LEGOs … And It Works!

From the you-knew-it-would-happen-at-some-point department: a “street view” photography car made out of LEGOs that actually works!

The car/toy (frankly, I’m not sure what to call it) is the work of Mark Crosbie, a software architect based in Dublin, Ireland and self-described “big LEGO kid by night.” It uses Lego’s NXT (a programmable robotics system), a dGPS sensor to capture the car’s coordinates, and four small cameras mounted on top.

Crosbie showcased the car at the Google Zeitgeist event in London last month, and posted this video of the car in action, along with some of the actual photos it took edited in. It’s pretty cool.

Google already has traditional cars, plus trikes, snowmobiles and trolleys in its vehicle fleet. We shared a link to Crosbie’s LEGO Street View car website with the real Street View team and got this reaction via email from Kei Kawai, Google Product Manager for Street View:

This LEGO prototype takes the term ‘street-level’ to a whole new, quite literal level! We’re always thinking about new platforms to collect useful imagery for our users, and we at Google do love our LEGOs. =)

(Photo via Mark Crosbie’s website, linked above.)