Google Street View Heads To The Amazon

If you find yourself turned around while searching out undiscovered tribes, you’ll soon be able to find the trans-amazonian route you need from Google Maps. Here’s how they’re doing it.

Google is teaming up with the Amazonas Sustainable Foundation, a local non-profit conservation organisation, and plans to send their off-road, Street-View equipped trikes–the same ones used to photograph off-road monuments like Stonehenge–to the Amazon basin to capture and stitch together a 360-degree view of its trails and tributaries. They’ll pedal about–obviously–while on land, but the tricycles will be mounted onto the roof of a boat (see above) for the watery bits.

Initially, a 50km section of the Rio Negro River will be photographed as well as the villages and pathways in that area, “wherever civilisation meets the rainforest,” Google stated in a press release. But in addition to exterior shots, the interiors of numerous buildings and community centres in the area will be recorded as well, in order to provide a “sense of what it’s like to live and work in places such as an Amazonian community centre and school,” said Google.

The search giant also plans to train local Foundation representatives in use of the equipment so that they can continue documentation efforts in the area. [GoogleBlog via PCWorld]