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Google Launches ‘Live View’ AR Walking Directions for Google Maps
- forkLding 7y agoHad this feature on my Google Maps a while back, thought it was already released and has some fun using it, but you need a constant internet connection
- sansnomme 7y agoAre they comparing live data with Street view data to ensure accuracy or is it just simple direction overlays through GPS? What algorithm is best for comparing images in 3D space while taking into account of differences due to littering, vehicles, street signs etc.? Also this is a great way for automated outsourced Street view data gathering. Would need a strong image stabilization algorithm but nothing a big enough neural network can't handle, in theory at least.
- jjeaff 7y agoIt seems to use image recognition of buildings and other features. When I tried it a few days ago, it shows sparkly dots on surrounding things and even shows an image overlay of a building and suggests you line it up with surrounding buildings.
- craftinator 7y agoWhy is this a thing? Why would Google invest money to create this? To use it, you must hold your phone in front of your face, with camera on, while walking. It is a regression in my opinion, because it adds no value to their current walking navigation system, and also encumbers the user with having to hold their phone up at eye level. Is it a cool novelty? Yes. Is it useful or productive (other than creating a new surface for advertising)? No. I strongly advise against using this gimmick. Please don't feed the bear. That is all.
- jjeaff 7y agoIt actually does not allow you to walk and use it at the same time. It is meant for stopping, getting your bearings, and then putting your phone down and continuing on your way. It definitely would be useful in unfamiliar, dense urban environments where maybe the streets are a bit too close together to easily distinguish on an overview map.
- the_seraphim 7y agoI've had this exact situation, I was looking for a place in London and i was close... real close. I ended up giving a homeless guy £5 and asking him to walk me to where i needed to be (i still missed my coach home and had to book the last one) it was less than 100 yards from where i was. This would have given me an instant bearing on the area and a direction to walk in. I since have been back and it took me two goes to find my route (walking round a massive building to find the part i needed)
- yoz-y 7y agoIt does allow you to walk and use it at the same time. But since it auto switches to normal view when you hold the phone flat it is easy to swap between both modes.
- Dayshine 7y agoI routinely navigate in London where I walk out of a tube station and have absolutely no clue which way is which. The roads are unlabelled and all look the same and the GPS direction dot isn't quite good enough Last week, with this feature, I pointed my camera across the street and it told me to go left. It was really really useful.
- cavisne 7y agoThis is great for big cities. I live in a medium sized city and GPS works pretty good in most places. I was surprised just how bad it is in NYC (with much taller and denser buildings), unless you can orientate yourself manually with a business the location is not accurate. This does the work for you.
- conmarap 7y agoThere's a number of things that are alarming me about this, but I'll focus on one thing: the privacy implications. Not just for the user, but for those who will appear in the pictures that Google will be - for sure - ingesting for the purpose of crowdsourcing street view imagery. Suddenly we have this platform that will be capturing millions of faces and potentially know where people have been even if they don't use the app. Not to mention that this type of app is treating people as incapable of following directions and it opens up the possibility of new avenues of advertising. Google already keeps an archive of your whereabouts and can even tell when you get in and out of a car. Just imagine wielding your phone around and getting "special offers" for that store you go by but never walk into.
- izacus 7y ago> There's a number of things that are alarming me about this, but I'll focus on one thing: the privacy implications. Not just for the user, but for those who will appear in the pictures that Google will be - for sure - ingesting for the purpose of crowdsourcing street view imagery. Suddenly we have this platform that will be capturing millions of faces and potentially know where people have been even if they don't use the app. Umm, the camera stream of AR isn't transmitted from your phone. The 3D objects are rendered on top of detected features on device.
- Nux 7y agoHow do you know? And even if it doesn't for starters, there's no telling it'll stay that way. Very legitimate concern.
- ridewinter 7y agoCouldn’t you say the same thing about the standard camera app on Android and iOS? People have it open all the time.
- izacus 7y ago> How do you know? And even if it doesn't for starters, there's no telling it'll stay that way. Same way I know there's no pagan god hiding in my phone whispering my secrets to evil aliens: by actually working with the technology, observing the behaviour of my device and reading the privacy policies and activity log published by Google and not finding any proof. Of course you can argue that Google might lie for whatever reason... but then you probably shouldn't be using Google Maps at all. Or any product built by a corporation.
- crazygringo 7y agoWhenever I come out of an unfamiliar subway station in NYC and am trying to get my bearings, my iPhone's compass direction is often off by 45° or more -- the blue arrow in Google Maps can be useless to know which way I'm pointing, and I always have to verify with street names. Curious if this will be a problem for AR. (When I'm consistently above-ground, however, e.g. on a car trip, compass orientation remains perfect -- I'm assuming it calibrates itself to GPS movement or something.)
- LeoPanthera 7y agoYou can virtually instantly calibrate the iPhone compass by waving it a 3 dimensional figure 8 pattern. It's hard to describe, but this YouTube video (for the original generation-1 iPhone (!)) shows it quickly: https://youtu.be/sP3d00Hr14o https://youtu.be/sP3d00Hr14o It still works and it's quick and easy to do.
- NicoJuicy 7y agoThis is for any phone
- csande17 7y agoMy phone compass is pretty consistently wrong (probably because I use a case with magnets in it), but the AR navigation feature works well for me. It asks you to point your phone camera at "buildings and signs across the street", so I think it's using Street View-based image recognition.
- remarkEon 7y agoCounter-intuitively (or not?), my sense of cardinal direction while using the subways in New York was way better before the smartphone era.
- modeless 7y agoThis is exactly the scenario that AR is best suited for. Assuming that it works at all, the orientation data from the camera + gyro will be essentially perfect.
- mrtweetyhack 7y agoGoogle to shut down Live View AR Walking Directions for Google Maps tomorrow
- aerovistae 7y agoToo bad the compass still doesn't know which way I'm facing 90% of the time.
- jm_l 7y agoThe whole point of AR directions is that it uses data from your camera to figure out your orientation
- ridewinter 7y agoGoogle uses AI along with the camera to correct the compass. If they could integrate this correction with their standard compass API it would be a game changer. As a side note, the API docs in both Android and iOS fail to mention how unreliable the compass outputs are!
- tjoff 7y agoOr they don't don't know about it. It is pretty apparent that the google maps team have never tried to navigate via compass on an actual phone.
- martyvis 7y agoCompass operation is clearly dependant on the hardware and your physical surroundings. My phone compass ( LG V30+) works well in a suburban street or open bushland, showing high sensitivity. Inside my steel framed house or 5 metres from a 40 storey steel reinforcement sky scrapers not so much. ( And not much different from my 40 year old Silva compass) That's why Google is using the camera, Street view and AR to align the orientation
- tjoff 7y agoYes. And why, for the love of everything that is holy, can you not disable compass navigation then?!? Even gps direction is vastly superior during walks - despite the obvious issues with that.
- 7y ago
- shpx 7y agoSuper cool. It even worked for me at night, although I was walking down a brightly lit major street. I wonder if it could work in a dark alley or do indoor navigation in malls.
- aiddun 7y agoHow much of a battery drain is current AR tech? I would imagine it's decently computationally expensive.
- KaiserPro 7y agoFrustratingly, they don't explain how it works, or why it useful. 1) its a visual search. This means that using streetview data, google has crunched a sparse 3d pointcloud. Each of these points are represent a globally unique has of a point. (a global descriptor) 2) This is better than GPS, because its possible to resolve a position to ~20cms and crucially where true north is. Crucially it doesn't need an unobstructed view of the sky to resolve a position. In urban canyons, where sky is limited, there are loads of unique visual points that are more than enough to calculate an accurate position. It also works inside, in places like malls. The drawback is that it requires constant updating to remain accurate, buildings and hoardings change. Now, there is a patent for self updating, but google doesn't own it. Also, they don't appear to be offering this service to third parties, which is a shame.
- greggeter 7y agoNew? I've had this on my phone for a year...
- 51Cards 7y agoNice that this is finally live. I was in the beta group for it for about a year and really liked the feature. Only shortcoming was at night it didn't do well at figuring out your direction as it uses visual clues to get the exact direction you are pointing. Was great for walking around cities as I travel a lot.
- arjo129 7y agoA Friend of mine and I had attempted something similar but in an indoor setting. The key problem we faced is that the compass will in the phone and positioning system. The way we overcame the orientation was by using the camera to combine the visual odometer data with the compass measurements. We also faced issues with the localisation as being indoor meant we had to rely on wifi location which was not very good. Again, the way we got over this was to use the visual odometry, and rely on users turning. https://github.com/chelseyong/Android-App-AR-Map-Navigation https://github.com/chelseyong/Android-App-AR-Map-Navigation