Don’t be afraid if you come across them in Paris: Apple’s Maps app teams will map pedestrian areas
Their towering systems deposited were not to pass in the previews. Equipped with a backpack covered with image sensors, surprising explorers will venture, from Monday and for two months, in the pedestrian streets and parks of Paris. Objective: to record 360° views of places in order to feed Apple’s databases. In full overhaul of Plans, the default iPhone guidance application, the American giant intends to update the maps of the capital with a lot of images and precise data.
After having used, like its rival Google, cars equipped with multi-angle cameras, the Californian company is completing its field study with these pedestrian teams which will explore the locations prohibited to vehicles, in particular the hyper center around the Louvre and the Tuileries and the great Parisian green lungs that are the Bois de Boulogne or the Parc de la Villette. The LiDAR sensors of the “backpacks”, very efficient for telemetry, will also measure the surroundings of the Trocadéro or the banks of the Seine.
Once processed, these images will provide a very useful 360° view for finding your bearings in space and using the GPS guidance functions of the competing application of the untouchable Google Maps or Waze.
License plates and faces will of course be blurred as required by the legislation on the protection of personal data. “We are committed to protecting your privacy during these field studies. Thus, no face or license plate will be identifiable on the images published in the 360º view “explains Apple France who invite residents to report violations to his teams.
The new version of the Maps app will soon be available in France and revisited with a serious update of the arteries of the capital.