6 ms·

Google Maps Floor Plans

147 points by mshafrir 15y ago

jamesmiller5 15y ago
The view to align the map is very non-intuitive. It would be simply easier to just pick where the map should overlay first and then fine tune the alignment.
- Fernandoo 15y ago
  Totally agree with you, I find the alignment feature quiet complex.
- rickyconnolly 15y ago
  agreed, the two-screen, three-point alignment system is finicky and needlessly complex. All you need is pan, scale, and rotate functions to get the job done. Much more intuitive.
  - jpk 15y ago
    What it's doing is setting ground control points that can be passed to a tool like gdal_translate[1]. That three-point alignment deal is setting three pairs of points made up of a lat,lng on the world, and an x,y on the image. Most world map projections cause distortion that can't be compensated for with just pan, scale, and rotate. The GCP jazz can. But I'm in agreement, their UI to set the GCPs is terrible. :-P [1] http://www.gdal.org/gdal_translate.html http://www.gdal.org/gdal_translate.html
    - chrisbroadfoot 15y ago
      > Most world map projections cause distortion that can't be compensated for with just pan, scale, and rotate. Sort of. At the level of indoor floor plans, affine transformations are just fine.
      - jpk 15y ago
        Good call. Looking into this further, looks like you're right.[1] For the Mercator projection, translate, scale, and rotate are sufficient for the georectification of small images (read: floorplans). You'd need more of the affine toolbox if you used something like Mollweide (mostly sheer, right?), and then you might need non-affine stuff to deal with crazier projections. I guess, then, that begs the question of why the Google floorplan submission UI uses that weird double-pane thing? [1] http://blogs.esri.com/esri/arcgis/2011/03/24/tissot-s-indicatrix-helps-illustrate-map-projection-distortion/ http://blogs.esri.com/esri/arcgis/2011/03/24/tissot-s-indica...
cloudwalking 15y ago
This will be very useful in airports. It would also be nice in supermarkets, but that data would be tough to keep fresh.
- ajross 15y ago
  Which is why they're trying to crowd source the maintainership: the idea is that airports and giant retail stores will have a built-in incentive to keep their maps updated. And it might be true. But I'm a little mixed on this. Google maps, while great and useful, isn't an open source project. The data is closed and proprietary and not useful to the community at large. I'd much rather this be done under the umbrella of OSM or the like, or if nothing else published as a separate data set subject to open licensing.
  - pagekalisedown 15y ago
    Retail stores are optimized to make you spend the most on each visit. That's why necessities are in the back and far apart from each other. A floor plan goes against the self interest of the store.
    - ajross 15y ago
      A fair point, but it's only true in isolation. If they're in competition with another equally-well-stocked chain that has floorplans, then customers might prefer to shop at the niftier, more modern place with the fun maps. Note that big department stores have always had maps available at the entrance, it's not like they're inherently opposed to the practice.
    - aklemm 15y ago
      Prices will just go up a bit across all items once this available in all/most stores, and the stores will stop relying on suckering us into buying a bit more than we want in order to keep their margins up. That's the small price we'll pay for the added convenience.
  - aerosuch 15y ago
rdl 15y ago
How long until someone uses these to make first person shooter game maps automatically? (Using Google Maps outdoor mapping data for games is a great idea, like the tower defense game from a couple days ago).
- cpeterso 15y ago
  My Google Maps game idea is a Cannonball Run/Gumball Rally driving game. Players race little cars on Google Maps' road lines. A single-player game would be for point A to B time trials. A game server would all multiple players to race head-to-head. To control the game difficulty, you would choose a map zoom level, giving you access to more shortcuts but requiring more navigation. The advanced version of this game would use Google Street View for first-person racing!
- beaumartinez 15y ago
  Well, they'd have the plans, but what about room height, textures, furniture, and other details?
  - electromagnetic 15y ago
    Why not take texture samples from the locational photos already provided. Even if that was the only human interactive stage where the "designer" literally only marks sections of images for the textures. Ceiling heights can likely be extrapolated simply from photographs with the right programming. Find a photo with 5 people in it and approximate the building height from the peoples photographs. I personally can approximate the height and width of a house simply by counting bricks and shingles, because I work in construction I need to know if my scaffolding poles or ladders will reach and you're lucky if you get a tape measure to extend past 7ft without it buckling. (a sheet of shingles is 2ft wide, so every 3 shingle tabs is 2 ft. A brick and mortar roughly make 4", so 3 courses of brick make roughly 1ft. vinyl siding is normally double 4.5", double 5" or double 6" per sheet in height, one sheet is 12' long. Concrete board is generally 3ft by 8" high. Aluminum is always 8" high, generally 12' or 12.5' wide; If I can do this without a pencil and paper inside 30 seconds, it shouldn't be difficult to make an algorithm to work this out.) Extrapolating the interior of a building would likely be much harder, however pictures of these often come with scale references (IE people), but as with outside everything has to meet building codes and everything is made out of standardized parts. However, one great clue is handrails. First floor railings have to be a minimum of 36" high, second floor railings have to be a minimum of 42" high (standard is 42" by code for commercial spaces, regardless of height). Maximum 4" gap between vertical members, (generally made 4" on centre as a precaution), and no horizontal members between 4" in height and 35" in height as to make a railing climbable by a small child. Turning a rendering of an entire mall level in a game into simply picking colour swatches would be huge. Yes a pro studio is going to invest more time in polish, but for the guy making an iPhone app and is never going to see a huge return on the time he invests. Then accepting a bit of 'cookie cutter' genericness in level design won't be a huge compromise if it's in a great game. The national building codes of countries would give you all the information you need to extrapolate the size of rooms and buildings.
Shamiq 15y ago
Taking bets on the odds of this being disallowed for places where it would be actually useful (for example: airports; municipal buildings; skyscrapers).
- stcredzero 15y ago
  This could well have the same unintended effect that automated checkout had with stores. Stores want you to wander around being lost, so they have more time to keep you awash in marketing. In the end, though, it will be more of the same nonsense as "sticky" portals in the dot.com days. People know the utility of information, and dislike it when you keep information from them so you can market to them.
- bonzoesc 15y ago
  The competition already has this for airports: http://binged.it/HnKPqO http://binged.it/HnKPqO Compare: http://g.co/maps/8e9xp http://g.co/maps/8e9xp
  - magicalist 15y ago
    which is weird, because in the android maps application, SFO is completely filled in with a floor plan (and actually more detailed than the bing version, which appears limited to coarsely positioned rectangles for sections of the floor plan). Is there some poor UI incantation you need to do to get this to appear on google maps?
    - yellowbkpk 15y ago
      You might be able to see it if you turn on WebGL Maps on maps.google.com.
      - hsshah 15y ago
        Nope. Still Bing has a more detailed layout.
  - aubergene 15y ago
dan85 15y ago
Does the GPS work indoors?
- Apple-Guy 15y ago
  GPS is not accurate in doors. So companies are trying to use wifi stations to triangulate (but what if they moved the wifi stations?)
- kika 15y ago
  There's such thing as inertial navigation (that's how missiles fly even with GPS assistance), and potentially you can use a phone's accelerometer for that. We have a datacenter in downtown SJ and I was amazed when first parked there on the -3 floor underground. My car's in-dash nav works perfectly there :-) There's no even remote chance that GPS can work 3 stories down in a solid concrete building.
- cwiz 15y ago
  No. There are ways to do indoor positioning indoors: WiFi fingerprinting and supersonic marks. Triangulation (trilateration) the way it's used in GPS will not work indoors because it's impossible to build accurate signal propagation model – model would be extremely complicated. On the other hand signal propagation model can be learned via sampling actual signals in different spots on site. There are two ways to sample signals: 1) direct 2) indirect (via statistical models like SLAM) Positioning can be done by comparing signal strengths from model and actual device and feeding them to some statistical positioning algorithm like particle filter or LSE. These algorithms use not only signal strengths but accelerometer, gyro and magnetic sensors for movement model. Fingerprinting techniques can provide up to 30 cm accuracy. Huge win of WiFi fingerprinting is that it works on existing consumer-level hardware. But the downside is that you cannot scan WiFi in iOS public API. There is less accurate way to position user indoors using supersonic marks – and it works on any existing phone. Companies who do indoor positioning: WiFiSlam, Qubulus, WalkBase, Google, Nokia and we (applying to yc :). Some provide APIs, some are in stealth mode and Google has indoor positioning in some US and Japanese malls and airports. Personally I think that there is huge opportunity for location-aware apps for malls, airports, parking lots, hospitals, etc and it has not been tackled much by anyone yet.
cwe 15y ago
Why would this be Android only? Isn't there value at all in having this on a full computer?
- RobAtticus 15y ago
  Maybe, but they seem to be going for helping people find things in places like malls and such. So instead of using a directory (which can sometimes be few and far between), you find it on your phone. Also, you can probably sync with your location so you have a real-time "You are here!" icon.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  - comex 15y ago
    This is not a particularly good reason to make it Android only
flyt 15y ago
A shame that all of this data is collected "free" for Google, then people are made to pay to access it for their apps in the Maps API.
- ch0wn 15y ago
  The normal user will still be able to use them for free. Google, however, can't use the uploaded data for free, but has to invest quite massively in order to prepare it for consumption.
- cloudwalking 15y ago
  Only sites that pay are sites with many thousands of requests per day. They're more paying for the infrastructure overhead than data. Would you rather have Google Maps covered in ads, ala Search, or have the top 1% of companies making money from the product pay for it?
  - _delirium 15y ago
    You can't get even an offline dump for statistical/data-mining purposes, though; it's not only real-time, live use of the data that's restricted. That's why I contribute to OpenStreetMap but don't participate in any of Google Maps's crowdsourcing efforts, because I want the data to be available for bulk download to enable various kinds of analysis and reuse. If Google provided bulk downloads I'd support their service, though, even if the online API required payment, because I do think it's reasonable to charge people who're using Google's infrastructure as basically their webapp backend.
- nextparadigms 15y ago
  Google is providing a hosted service. They are free to host them themselves if they want.
  - zobzu 15y ago
    cool, link me to the dump and web interface so i can run my own! /sarcasm (you never known)
gee_totes 15y ago
What's preventing people from uploading incorrect floor plans? Plus, with no standard floor plan format, I don't see how this is useful, beyond showing another helpful picture of a location.
- aerosuch 15y ago
  Good question. This is why a more transparent indoor mapping process could breed innovation (a standard format) and better curation (allowing users to find and fix incorrect floor plans, a la OpenStreetMap or Wikipedia).
- zgohr 15y ago
  I actually see a benefit in uploading incorrect floor plans. A security measure, if you will.
waterlesscloud 15y ago
I wonder about copyright issues. Aren't the floorplans and directories in malls and such copyrighted? Who has the right to upload them to Google?
- jrockway 15y ago
  Theoretically, businesses have the right to upload their floor plans. And, it's perfectly fine to draw your own and upload those.
  - brudgers 15y ago
    [IANAL] If they draw them themselves, yes they can do what they wish. On the other hand, in the US, using the "blueprints" is probably going to be a violation of the copyright of the design professional who prepared them. Typical contract language restricts the Owner's use to "this project" and such rights terminate "upon completion of this project." [AIA Document B105-2007] Upon execution of this Agreement, the Architect grants to the Developer-Builder a nonexclusive license to use the Architect’s instruments of service solely and exclusively for purposes of constructing, using, maintaining, altering and adding to the Project or the Development, provided that the Developer-Builder substantially performs its obligations, including prompt payment of all sums when due, under this Agreement [AIA Document B107 2010].
    - jrockway 15y ago
      Just like using AirBnB is against most apartment leases, and crossing the street when the light is red is illegal. Welcome to a new age of civil disobedience, where people freely carry around ice cream cones in their back pockets on Sunday!
      - brudgers 15y ago
        That's quite a different claim from the rights based argument advanced previously. When it comes to Google, this isn't civil disobedience. It's simply taking advantage of the fact that the copyrights it is interested in ignoring are mostly held by many different people unlikely to have the resources to enforce them vigorously. BTW, it's Ice Cream Sandwiches Google wants everyone to carry.
brudgers 15y ago
In the US, "Blueprints" etc. are protected by copyright and the vast majority are provided to building owners under very restricted usage rights which do not anticipate such use. The suggestion that people just upload them is somewhat problematic in so far as it is akin to Napster's approach to music a decade ago.
- abraham 15y ago
  The upload form clearly states Make sure you have permission to use the floor plan you are uploading.
  - brudgers 15y ago
    That's not the same as Google making sure Google has permission to use them. Standard AIA contract language allows the owner to utilize the plans to construct their project. The author (architect) retains copyright.
    - gridspy 15y ago
      Blueprints specify the fabric of the building. All Google needs is a symbolic layout which is just a subset of that.
    - esrauch 15y ago
      IANAL but it seems to be that the layout of a particular existing building is factual information and therefore cannot be copyrighted, just like the location of streets cannot be copyrighted. I guess it's slightly more hairy because architecture is considered to be artistic as well as functional, whereas street layouts are generally only considered to be functional, but I still think that would stand.
      - brudgers 15y ago
        In the US, architectural designs can be protected by copyright, but it is uncommon. On the other hand, architectural drawings(aka "blueprints") are automatically protected by copyright as soon as they are published.
azelfrath 15y ago
$1,000 says this will be featured in a heist movie in the next year. This is exactly the kind of tech I used to scoff at when the uber-skilled hacker pulls up a 3D map of the target building.
tocomment 15y ago
So it's only available in Google maps on Android, not on the iphone or on the web? If it's just for Android I'm not submitting my building.
- untog 15y ago
  They can, and I imagine will, make it available on web. But the iPhone Maps application isn't developed by Google, so they can't add it. It looks like Apple moving away from using Google maps, anyhow.
- aerosuch 15y ago
  While the technology for making indoor map content (georeferencing a floor plan) is already widely available, most smartphones do a very poor job of positioning themselves indoors. GPS doesn't work inside, leaving cell and wifi trilateration as the most readily available alternatives. Another likely factor for Google deploying on Android only is the ability to use wifi signal strength data from the phone to do approximate indoor positioning (the you-are-here "little blue dot"). Apple chose to lock developers out of the API for reading wifi signal strength, which limits the iPhone's ability to do indoor positioning (or show you nearby wifi routers). In Apple's defense, the indoor positioning experience on Android does not meet the high expectations that GPS has set for users. Instead of a precise little blue dot, you get a 10-30m wide big blue circle. Some of the positioning hardware announced from chipset makers like CSR and Broadcom may improve this situation in the next generation of handsets.
  - gbog 15y ago
    I wonder why we couldn't use sound as a precise indoor positioning system. Each position has a unique reverberation signature.
zupreme 15y ago
Most large retail outlets will probably opt out of this initiative. A big part of their revenue model hinges on the "impulse buying" which occurs as you wander throughout the store looking for your items. There is a reason why no major department or grocery chain (that I am aware of) has a store directory at the front like most malls do. However, if crowdsourcing is allowed this could become major. I and 20 other people could all map out the Walmart (for example), upload the data, and then whatever matches in 80% of the submissions would become part of the "map". If enough people did that it would almost force the major chains to participate, if for no other reason than to maintain control of their maps.
- jrockway 15y ago
  This is probably only partially true. If the goal was really to confuse you, they would not put related products near each other (the cheese would be with the bananas, the milk would be with the dishwasher detergent, etc.) They would also rearrange the store every week, so that you wouldn't be able to learn where items are. Honestly, I've never seen stores arranged for impulse buying except to have certain items promoted above others. Eye-level shelves, displays at the front of aisles, etc. Otherwise, the fruits and vegetables are together, the canned items are together, the milk and cheese are together, etc. Pretty much every grocery store I've ever been in has been laid out in approximately the same way. So I'm worried that you may be propagating an urban legend.
  - zupreme 15y ago
    Jon, Thanks for the interesting perspective. I've actually opened, run, and sold a retail store before (mobile phones and accessories) so, while the type of layout logic I referred to in my comment above did not apply to my store (because it wasn't large enough) I did read ALOT on the subject and was part of the local Chamber of Commerce so I can assure you that impulse buying considerations are a big part of why stores get laid out the way they do. There are even consulting firms that make a tidy income by advising stores on product placements within the store for maximum sales.
    - 15y ago
djrconcepts 15y ago
I think it will be great to be able to navigate complex public locations such as shopping malls, casinos, college campuses, hospitals, etc..
sakai 15y ago
Does anyone have a link to a building with floor plans already uploaded? I'd be curious to see how they've designed the interface but can't easily find one... (i.e., in 2 minutes in downtown SF)
- jrockway 15y ago
  O'Hare Airport had a map the last time I was there. I'm not sure we show indoor maps in the web interface, though; I can't find any, anyway.
- dclowd9901 15y ago
  I'm going to take a wild guess that google has probably already made one for their own building.
- aubergene 15y ago
  Macy's New York, it appears flat in the web map, but works in Android, although I found it to be quite useless when actually within the store. http://maps.google.com/?ll=40.750512,-73.988344&spn=0.003979,0.00825&hnear=PRINCE,+New+York+10012&t=m&z=18 http://maps.google.com/?ll=40.750512,-73.988344&spn=0.00...
- anigbrowl 15y ago
  Try Ikea and nearby stores in Emeryville, which is close enough to SF that you may be familiar with the malls in question.
kenrikm 15y ago
They are directly targeting the market that Point Inside is in. I'm curious why they did not just purchase them rather than building something that will need to gain traction?
- aerosuch 15y ago
  Different business model? Google caters to highest-bidder advertisers. PointInside works more directly with building owners, like retailers: http://www.pointinside.com/blog/2011/12/what-google-indoor-maps-really-mean-for-retailers/ http://www.pointinside.com/blog/2011/12/what-google-indoor-m...
marcamillion 15y ago
Ok.....now I see the Google Glasses coming together, and that video doesn't seem as fanciful 'pie-in-the-sky' as I initially thought. If Google is able to bring it all together, this could be pretty epic!
aubergene 15y ago
Google are building various tools which allow users to contribute data (especially to maps). However they don't provide an easy way for users to choose to release their own contributions under an open license. I asked Marissa Mayer this question at SXSW 2011 and she said they would change it, however I haven't seen this happen. I would very much like to see Google change their policy so that by default any user generated contributions are released under a license which permits reuse without further permission from Google. My question is at 28:30 http://audio.sxsw.com/2011/podcasts/GoogleMarrisaMayer.mp3 http://audio.sxsw.com/2011/podcasts/GoogleMarrisaMayer.mp3
- aerosuch 15y ago
  Julian - just listened to your question from SXSW last year. I was part of another discussion on indoor maps this year: http://schedule.sxsw.com/2012/events/event_IAP100110 http://schedule.sxsw.com/2012/events/event_IAP100110 One of my fellow panelists from Google discussed ways for developers to use Google's existing map tools to create their own indoor map content. This uses the Google Maps slippy map API, but doesn't require the developer to submit indoor map data to Google: http://www.google.com/events/io/2011/sessions/map-your-business-inside-and-out.html http://www.google.com/events/io/2011/sessions/map-your-busin... I would also like to see indoor map data, especially for public spaces, be more freely (libre) available. There are a few contributors at OpenStreetMap working on indoor maps, but privacy/data structure/data acquisition pose significant challenges. I'm sure they'd be interested in your help!
  - aubergene 15y ago
    Thanks, just listening now
  - 7952 15y ago
    Just curious, but why exactly do you want indoor mapping? Is finding your way around buildings really that problematic? What exactly is the point?
    - thezilch 15y ago
mehmeta 15y ago
If anyone's curious about an example, Mall of America is one of the locations mapped with this feature, here's the Google blog post: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/11/new-frontier-for-google-maps-mapping.html http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/11/new-frontier-for-goog... It's a pretty interesting development for me to watch as the app I'm currently working on named Mashupforge (http://mashupforge.com http://mashupforge.com) lets people easily create interactive maps out of image floorplans.
hsshah 15y ago
This nicely correlated to their Project Glass demo where the guy asks for directions 'inside' the book store. To turn that into a reality, Google will certainly have to crowdsource this info.
finalcut 15y ago
I submitted four floors worth of plans for a building on our campus probably close to two months ago; they are still "pending review" There is no way to get feedback about the process and no indication on where in the queue our submissions are. There are probably 40 buildings on our campus that I was going to submit floor plans for. However, I was using this first building as a guinea pig of sorts. I can't imagine spending the time to get the other 39, multi-floor, buildings aligned in their system if there is little likelihood they will ever end up in the system for public consumption.
- calwonderman 15y ago
  Finalcut23, Thanks for reaching out—and for your feedback. Your problem is something we are very interested in. If you are interested in solving this, please let me know by email at thomasdn@google.com. Thanks again. Tom
cies 15y ago
See: http://floorplanner.com http://floorplanner.com They are a startup from my town (Rotterdam) and have been doing online floorplans longer then anyone else.
mbtforshoes 15y ago
http://www.mbtforshoes.com/ http://www.mbtforshoes.com/ Cheap and nice shoes

147 points by mshafrir 15y ago

The view to align the map is very non-intuitive. It would be simply easier to just pick where the map should overlay first and then fine tune the alignment.

Fernandoo 15y ago
Totally agree with you, I find the alignment feature quiet complex.
rickyconnolly 15y ago
agreed, the two-screen, three-point alignment system is finicky and needlessly complex. All you need is pan, scale, and rotate functions to get the job done. Much more intuitive.
- jpk 15y ago
  What it's doing is setting ground control points that can be passed to a tool like gdal_translate[1]. That three-point alignment deal is setting three pairs of points made up of a lat,lng on the world, and an x,y on the image. Most world map projections cause distortion that can't be compensated for with just pan, scale, and rotate. The GCP jazz can. But I'm in agreement, their UI to set the GCPs is terrible. :-P [1] http://www.gdal.org/gdal_translate.html http://www.gdal.org/gdal_translate.html
  - chrisbroadfoot 15y ago
    > Most world map projections cause distortion that can't be compensated for with just pan, scale, and rotate. Sort of. At the level of indoor floor plans, affine transformations are just fine.
    - jpk 15y ago
      Good call. Looking into this further, looks like you're right.[1] For the Mercator projection, translate, scale, and rotate are sufficient for the georectification of small images (read: floorplans). You'd need more of the affine toolbox if you used something like Mollweide (mostly sheer, right?), and then you might need non-affine stuff to deal with crazier projections. I guess, then, that begs the question of why the Google floorplan submission UI uses that weird double-pane thing? [1] http://blogs.esri.com/esri/arcgis/2011/03/24/tissot-s-indicatrix-helps-illustrate-map-projection-distortion/ http://blogs.esri.com/esri/arcgis/2011/03/24/tissot-s-indica...

cloudwalking 15y ago

This will be very useful in airports. It would also be nice in supermarkets, but that data would be tough to keep fresh.

ajross 15y ago
Which is why they're trying to crowd source the maintainership: the idea is that airports and giant retail stores will have a built-in incentive to keep their maps updated. And it might be true. But I'm a little mixed on this. Google maps, while great and useful, isn't an open source project. The data is closed and proprietary and not useful to the community at large. I'd much rather this be done under the umbrella of OSM or the like, or if nothing else published as a separate data set subject to open licensing.
- pagekalisedown 15y ago
  Retail stores are optimized to make you spend the most on each visit. That's why necessities are in the back and far apart from each other. A floor plan goes against the self interest of the store.
  - ajross 15y ago
    A fair point, but it's only true in isolation. If they're in competition with another equally-well-stocked chain that has floorplans, then customers might prefer to shop at the niftier, more modern place with the fun maps. Note that big department stores have always had maps available at the entrance, it's not like they're inherently opposed to the practice.
  - aklemm 15y ago
    Prices will just go up a bit across all items once this available in all/most stores, and the stores will stop relying on suckering us into buying a bit more than we want in order to keep their margins up. That's the small price we'll pay for the added convenience.
- aerosuch 15y ago

rdl 15y ago

How long until someone uses these to make first person shooter game maps automatically? (Using Google Maps outdoor mapping data for games is a great idea, like the tower defense game from a couple days ago).

cpeterso 15y ago
My Google Maps game idea is a Cannonball Run/Gumball Rally driving game. Players race little cars on Google Maps' road lines. A single-player game would be for point A to B time trials. A game server would all multiple players to race head-to-head. To control the game difficulty, you would choose a map zoom level, giving you access to more shortcuts but requiring more navigation. The advanced version of this game would use Google Street View for first-person racing!
beaumartinez 15y ago
Well, they'd have the plans, but what about room height, textures, furniture, and other details?
- electromagnetic 15y ago
  Why not take texture samples from the locational photos already provided. Even if that was the only human interactive stage where the "designer" literally only marks sections of images for the textures. Ceiling heights can likely be extrapolated simply from photographs with the right programming. Find a photo with 5 people in it and approximate the building height from the peoples photographs. I personally can approximate the height and width of a house simply by counting bricks and shingles, because I work in construction I need to know if my scaffolding poles or ladders will reach and you're lucky if you get a tape measure to extend past 7ft without it buckling. (a sheet of shingles is 2ft wide, so every 3 shingle tabs is 2 ft. A brick and mortar roughly make 4", so 3 courses of brick make roughly 1ft. vinyl siding is normally double 4.5", double 5" or double 6" per sheet in height, one sheet is 12' long. Concrete board is generally 3ft by 8" high. Aluminum is always 8" high, generally 12' or 12.5' wide; If I can do this without a pencil and paper inside 30 seconds, it shouldn't be difficult to make an algorithm to work this out.) Extrapolating the interior of a building would likely be much harder, however pictures of these often come with scale references (IE people), but as with outside everything has to meet building codes and everything is made out of standardized parts. However, one great clue is handrails. First floor railings have to be a minimum of 36" high, second floor railings have to be a minimum of 42" high (standard is 42" by code for commercial spaces, regardless of height). Maximum 4" gap between vertical members, (generally made 4" on centre as a precaution), and no horizontal members between 4" in height and 35" in height as to make a railing climbable by a small child. Turning a rendering of an entire mall level in a game into simply picking colour swatches would be huge. Yes a pro studio is going to invest more time in polish, but for the guy making an iPhone app and is never going to see a huge return on the time he invests. Then accepting a bit of 'cookie cutter' genericness in level design won't be a huge compromise if it's in a great game. The national building codes of countries would give you all the information you need to extrapolate the size of rooms and buildings.

Shamiq 15y ago

Taking bets on the odds of this being disallowed for places where it would be actually useful (for example: airports; municipal buildings; skyscrapers).

stcredzero 15y ago
This could well have the same unintended effect that automated checkout had with stores. Stores want you to wander around being lost, so they have more time to keep you awash in marketing. In the end, though, it will be more of the same nonsense as "sticky" portals in the dot.com days. People know the utility of information, and dislike it when you keep information from them so you can market to them.
bonzoesc 15y ago
The competition already has this for airports: http://binged.it/HnKPqO http://binged.it/HnKPqO Compare: http://g.co/maps/8e9xp http://g.co/maps/8e9xp
- magicalist 15y ago
  which is weird, because in the android maps application, SFO is completely filled in with a floor plan (and actually more detailed than the bing version, which appears limited to coarsely positioned rectangles for sections of the floor plan). Is there some poor UI incantation you need to do to get this to appear on google maps?
  - yellowbkpk 15y ago
    You might be able to see it if you turn on WebGL Maps on maps.google.com.
    - hsshah 15y ago
      Nope. Still Bing has a more detailed layout.
- aubergene 15y ago

dan85 15y ago

Does the GPS work indoors?

Apple-Guy 15y ago
GPS is not accurate in doors. So companies are trying to use wifi stations to triangulate (but what if they moved the wifi stations?)
kika 15y ago
There's such thing as inertial navigation (that's how missiles fly even with GPS assistance), and potentially you can use a phone's accelerometer for that. We have a datacenter in downtown SJ and I was amazed when first parked there on the -3 floor underground. My car's in-dash nav works perfectly there :-) There's no even remote chance that GPS can work 3 stories down in a solid concrete building.
cwiz 15y ago
No. There are ways to do indoor positioning indoors: WiFi fingerprinting and supersonic marks. Triangulation (trilateration) the way it's used in GPS will not work indoors because it's impossible to build accurate signal propagation model – model would be extremely complicated. On the other hand signal propagation model can be learned via sampling actual signals in different spots on site. There are two ways to sample signals: 1) direct 2) indirect (via statistical models like SLAM) Positioning can be done by comparing signal strengths from model and actual device and feeding them to some statistical positioning algorithm like particle filter or LSE. These algorithms use not only signal strengths but accelerometer, gyro and magnetic sensors for movement model. Fingerprinting techniques can provide up to 30 cm accuracy. Huge win of WiFi fingerprinting is that it works on existing consumer-level hardware. But the downside is that you cannot scan WiFi in iOS public API. There is less accurate way to position user indoors using supersonic marks – and it works on any existing phone. Companies who do indoor positioning: WiFiSlam, Qubulus, WalkBase, Google, Nokia and we (applying to yc :). Some provide APIs, some are in stealth mode and Google has indoor positioning in some US and Japanese malls and airports. Personally I think that there is huge opportunity for location-aware apps for malls, airports, parking lots, hospitals, etc and it has not been tackled much by anyone yet.

cwe 15y ago

Why would this be Android only? Isn't there value at all in having this on a full computer?

RobAtticus 15y ago
Maybe, but they seem to be going for helping people find things in places like malls and such. So instead of using a directory (which can sometimes be few and far between), you find it on your phone. Also, you can probably sync with your location so you have a real-time "You are here!" icon.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- comex 15y ago
  This is not a particularly good reason to make it Android only

flyt 15y ago

A shame that all of this data is collected "free" for Google, then people are made to pay to access it for their apps in the Maps API.

ch0wn 15y ago
The normal user will still be able to use them for free. Google, however, can't use the uploaded data for free, but has to invest quite massively in order to prepare it for consumption.
cloudwalking 15y ago
Only sites that pay are sites with many thousands of requests per day. They're more paying for the infrastructure overhead than data. Would you rather have Google Maps covered in ads, ala Search, or have the top 1% of companies making money from the product pay for it?
- _delirium 15y ago
  You can't get even an offline dump for statistical/data-mining purposes, though; it's not only real-time, live use of the data that's restricted. That's why I contribute to OpenStreetMap but don't participate in any of Google Maps's crowdsourcing efforts, because I want the data to be available for bulk download to enable various kinds of analysis and reuse. If Google provided bulk downloads I'd support their service, though, even if the online API required payment, because I do think it's reasonable to charge people who're using Google's infrastructure as basically their webapp backend.
nextparadigms 15y ago
Google is providing a hosted service. They are free to host them themselves if they want.
- zobzu 15y ago
  cool, link me to the dump and web interface so i can run my own! /sarcasm (you never known)

gee_totes 15y ago

What's preventing people from uploading incorrect floor plans? Plus, with no standard floor plan format, I don't see how this is useful, beyond showing another helpful picture of a location.

aerosuch 15y ago
Good question. This is why a more transparent indoor mapping process could breed innovation (a standard format) and better curation (allowing users to find and fix incorrect floor plans, a la OpenStreetMap or Wikipedia).
zgohr 15y ago
I actually see a benefit in uploading incorrect floor plans. A security measure, if you will.

waterlesscloud 15y ago

I wonder about copyright issues. Aren't the floorplans and directories in malls and such copyrighted? Who has the right to upload them to Google?

jrockway 15y ago
Theoretically, businesses have the right to upload their floor plans. And, it's perfectly fine to draw your own and upload those.
- brudgers 15y ago
  [IANAL] If they draw them themselves, yes they can do what they wish. On the other hand, in the US, using the "blueprints" is probably going to be a violation of the copyright of the design professional who prepared them. Typical contract language restricts the Owner's use to "this project" and such rights terminate "upon completion of this project." [AIA Document B105-2007] Upon execution of this Agreement, the Architect grants to the Developer-Builder a nonexclusive license to use the Architect’s instruments of service solely and exclusively for purposes of constructing, using, maintaining, altering and adding to the Project or the Development, provided that the Developer-Builder substantially performs its obligations, including prompt payment of all sums when due, under this Agreement [AIA Document B107 2010].
  - jrockway 15y ago
    Just like using AirBnB is against most apartment leases, and crossing the street when the light is red is illegal. Welcome to a new age of civil disobedience, where people freely carry around ice cream cones in their back pockets on Sunday!
    - brudgers 15y ago
      That's quite a different claim from the rights based argument advanced previously. When it comes to Google, this isn't civil disobedience. It's simply taking advantage of the fact that the copyrights it is interested in ignoring are mostly held by many different people unlikely to have the resources to enforce them vigorously. BTW, it's Ice Cream Sandwiches Google wants everyone to carry.

brudgers 15y ago

In the US, "Blueprints" etc. are protected by copyright and the vast majority are provided to building owners under very restricted usage rights which do not anticipate such use. The suggestion that people just upload them is somewhat problematic in so far as it is akin to Napster's approach to music a decade ago.

abraham 15y ago
The upload form clearly states Make sure you have permission to use the floor plan you are uploading.
- brudgers 15y ago
  That's not the same as Google making sure Google has permission to use them. Standard AIA contract language allows the owner to utilize the plans to construct their project. The author (architect) retains copyright.
  - gridspy 15y ago
    Blueprints specify the fabric of the building. All Google needs is a symbolic layout which is just a subset of that.
  - esrauch 15y ago
    IANAL but it seems to be that the layout of a particular existing building is factual information and therefore cannot be copyrighted, just like the location of streets cannot be copyrighted. I guess it's slightly more hairy because architecture is considered to be artistic as well as functional, whereas street layouts are generally only considered to be functional, but I still think that would stand.
    - brudgers 15y ago
      In the US, architectural designs can be protected by copyright, but it is uncommon. On the other hand, architectural drawings(aka "blueprints") are automatically protected by copyright as soon as they are published.

azelfrath 15y ago

$1,000 says this will be featured in a heist movie in the next year. This is exactly the kind of tech I used to scoff at when the uber-skilled hacker pulls up a 3D map of the target building.

tocomment 15y ago

So it's only available in Google maps on Android, not on the iphone or on the web? If it's just for Android I'm not submitting my building.

untog 15y ago
They can, and I imagine will, make it available on web. But the iPhone Maps application isn't developed by Google, so they can't add it. It looks like Apple moving away from using Google maps, anyhow.
aerosuch 15y ago
While the technology for making indoor map content (georeferencing a floor plan) is already widely available, most smartphones do a very poor job of positioning themselves indoors. GPS doesn't work inside, leaving cell and wifi trilateration as the most readily available alternatives. Another likely factor for Google deploying on Android only is the ability to use wifi signal strength data from the phone to do approximate indoor positioning (the you-are-here "little blue dot"). Apple chose to lock developers out of the API for reading wifi signal strength, which limits the iPhone's ability to do indoor positioning (or show you nearby wifi routers). In Apple's defense, the indoor positioning experience on Android does not meet the high expectations that GPS has set for users. Instead of a precise little blue dot, you get a 10-30m wide big blue circle. Some of the positioning hardware announced from chipset makers like CSR and Broadcom may improve this situation in the next generation of handsets.
- gbog 15y ago
  I wonder why we couldn't use sound as a precise indoor positioning system. Each position has a unique reverberation signature.

zupreme 15y ago

Most large retail outlets will probably opt out of this initiative. A big part of their revenue model hinges on the "impulse buying" which occurs as you wander throughout the store looking for your items. There is a reason why no major department or grocery chain (that I am aware of) has a store directory at the front like most malls do. However, if crowdsourcing is allowed this could become major. I and 20 other people could all map out the Walmart (for example), upload the data, and then whatever matches in 80% of the submissions would become part of the "map". If enough people did that it would almost force the major chains to participate, if for no other reason than to maintain control of their maps.

jrockway 15y ago
This is probably only partially true. If the goal was really to confuse you, they would not put related products near each other (the cheese would be with the bananas, the milk would be with the dishwasher detergent, etc.) They would also rearrange the store every week, so that you wouldn't be able to learn where items are. Honestly, I've never seen stores arranged for impulse buying except to have certain items promoted above others. Eye-level shelves, displays at the front of aisles, etc. Otherwise, the fruits and vegetables are together, the canned items are together, the milk and cheese are together, etc. Pretty much every grocery store I've ever been in has been laid out in approximately the same way. So I'm worried that you may be propagating an urban legend.
- zupreme 15y ago
  Jon, Thanks for the interesting perspective. I've actually opened, run, and sold a retail store before (mobile phones and accessories) so, while the type of layout logic I referred to in my comment above did not apply to my store (because it wasn't large enough) I did read ALOT on the subject and was part of the local Chamber of Commerce so I can assure you that impulse buying considerations are a big part of why stores get laid out the way they do. There are even consulting firms that make a tidy income by advising stores on product placements within the store for maximum sales.
  - 15y ago

djrconcepts 15y ago

I think it will be great to be able to navigate complex public locations such as shopping malls, casinos, college campuses, hospitals, etc..

sakai 15y ago

Does anyone have a link to a building with floor plans already uploaded? I'd be curious to see how they've designed the interface but can't easily find one... (i.e., in 2 minutes in downtown SF)

jrockway 15y ago
O'Hare Airport had a map the last time I was there. I'm not sure we show indoor maps in the web interface, though; I can't find any, anyway.
dclowd9901 15y ago
I'm going to take a wild guess that google has probably already made one for their own building.
aubergene 15y ago
Macy's New York, it appears flat in the web map, but works in Android, although I found it to be quite useless when actually within the store. http://maps.google.com/?ll=40.750512,-73.988344&spn=0.003979,0.00825&hnear=PRINCE,+New+York+10012&t=m&z=18 http://maps.google.com/?ll=40.750512,-73.988344&spn=0.00...
anigbrowl 15y ago
Try Ikea and nearby stores in Emeryville, which is close enough to SF that you may be familiar with the malls in question.

kenrikm 15y ago

They are directly targeting the market that Point Inside is in. I'm curious why they did not just purchase them rather than building something that will need to gain traction?

aerosuch 15y ago
Different business model? Google caters to highest-bidder advertisers. PointInside works more directly with building owners, like retailers: http://www.pointinside.com/blog/2011/12/what-google-indoor-maps-really-mean-for-retailers/ http://www.pointinside.com/blog/2011/12/what-google-indoor-m...

marcamillion 15y ago

Ok.....now I see the Google Glasses coming together, and that video doesn't seem as fanciful 'pie-in-the-sky' as I initially thought. If Google is able to bring it all together, this could be pretty epic!

aubergene 15y ago

Google are building various tools which allow users to contribute data (especially to maps). However they don't provide an easy way for users to choose to release their own contributions under an open license. I asked Marissa Mayer this question at SXSW 2011 and she said they would change it, however I haven't seen this happen. I would very much like to see Google change their policy so that by default any user generated contributions are released under a license which permits reuse without further permission from Google. My question is at 28:30 http://audio.sxsw.com/2011/podcasts/GoogleMarrisaMayer.mp3 http://audio.sxsw.com/2011/podcasts/GoogleMarrisaMayer.mp3

aerosuch 15y ago
Julian - just listened to your question from SXSW last year. I was part of another discussion on indoor maps this year: http://schedule.sxsw.com/2012/events/event_IAP100110 http://schedule.sxsw.com/2012/events/event_IAP100110 One of my fellow panelists from Google discussed ways for developers to use Google's existing map tools to create their own indoor map content. This uses the Google Maps slippy map API, but doesn't require the developer to submit indoor map data to Google: http://www.google.com/events/io/2011/sessions/map-your-business-inside-and-out.html http://www.google.com/events/io/2011/sessions/map-your-busin... I would also like to see indoor map data, especially for public spaces, be more freely (libre) available. There are a few contributors at OpenStreetMap working on indoor maps, but privacy/data structure/data acquisition pose significant challenges. I'm sure they'd be interested in your help!
- aubergene 15y ago
  Thanks, just listening now
- 7952 15y ago
  Just curious, but why exactly do you want indoor mapping? Is finding your way around buildings really that problematic? What exactly is the point?
  - thezilch 15y ago

mehmeta 15y ago

If anyone's curious about an example, Mall of America is one of the locations mapped with this feature, here's the Google blog post: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/11/new-frontier-for-google-maps-mapping.html http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/11/new-frontier-for-goog... It's a pretty interesting development for me to watch as the app I'm currently working on named Mashupforge (http://mashupforge.com http://mashupforge.com) lets people easily create interactive maps out of image floorplans.

hsshah 15y ago

This nicely correlated to their Project Glass demo where the guy asks for directions 'inside' the book store. To turn that into a reality, Google will certainly have to crowdsource this info.

finalcut 15y ago

I submitted four floors worth of plans for a building on our campus probably close to two months ago; they are still "pending review" There is no way to get feedback about the process and no indication on where in the queue our submissions are. There are probably 40 buildings on our campus that I was going to submit floor plans for. However, I was using this first building as a guinea pig of sorts. I can't imagine spending the time to get the other 39, multi-floor, buildings aligned in their system if there is little likelihood they will ever end up in the system for public consumption.

calwonderman 15y ago
Finalcut23, Thanks for reaching out—and for your feedback. Your problem is something we are very interested in. If you are interested in solving this, please let me know by email at thomasdn@google.com. Thanks again. Tom

cies 15y ago

See: http://floorplanner.com http://floorplanner.com They are a startup from my town (Rotterdam) and have been doing online floorplans longer then anyone else.

mbtforshoes 15y ago

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