Waymo, Zoox and Tesla now offer self driving cars in the US. Can these type of self driving cars be used to collect images for Google Maps Street View in the near future? Maybe, but the roof of the Waymo cars are occupied by camera and lidar sensors to navigate to the destination. We need some Street View cameras there for this to work.
The most likely self driving car to be used to collect Google Maps Street View images is still the Waymo cars since the service is owned by Google (Alphabet Inc). Currently the self driving cars is only available in a few cities in mainly California and Texas, but both Waymo and Tesla plan to expand rapidly this year.
Will Google start to use the cars for Street View? Can the Street View cameras be moved from the roof to the side of the car or made smaller? The Waymo sensors around the car is already kind of bulky and ugly. Or can Waymo and Google Street View use the same cameras? Any thoughts?
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If this is to actually happen, it will require a profound change in camera architecture. Perhaps this will be expensive for Alphabet Inc. to invest in this technology, but settling for other common and easily maintained vehicles, in addition to the cameras that are now 5th generation, are more efficient, lighter, and easier to use than adding a ton of technology that is not yet possible to implement, but who knows what the next decade will bring‽