Rochester, New York — Strafford County residents might have seen a strange looking orange minivan driving around in the last few weeks, capped with multiple cameras and foreign looking wired machines. Some might have asked themselves, What in the name of all that is good and holy is that thing doing?

The vans represent the next stage in maps. For nearly 42 centuries, maps changed very little. They became more accurate, but they remained a two-dimensional representation of the land and water underneath us.

But cartography has come a long way in the past 40 years. And Rochester and its surrounding communities have just been recorded.

Tele Atlas, a global corporation based in The Netherlands with American headquarters in Lebanon, N.H., is in the second phase of a three-year project, mapping the United States and Canada precisely.

They have completed the mapping and photographing of all the highways in the country and are now working on doing precise measurements of the secondary roads.

“This is being put in on an ongoing basis,” says Dan Adams, vice president of operations for the Americas. “On any given day we have about 700 people who are working on updating the databases.”

The newly compiled data is released to their clients every 90 days. Tele Atlas doesn’t provide maps for the end user. Instead, they provide the information to a company like Google, which uses it in their own mapping applications — like Google Maps. And the information collected is miles ahead of anything a paper map could display. The vans collecting the data are equipped with several computers, each continuously compiling images from multiple cameras. Gyroscopes measure the slope and cant of the road. The computers know if the road is tilted and if the vehicle’s Global Positioning System fails, there are sensors on each van to measure precise distances. Vans traveling in big cities are even equipped with cameras that will allow the end user to simulate looking up at skyscrapers.

The company is working with stereo imagery and LIDAR sensors, similar to radar. But Adams says the most exciting prospect for the future will be in working with the end-users themselves, which will allow very rapid updates to maps. It will help with very accurate updates on things like closed roads and repair work.

Adams notes that the company uses algorithms to figure the most effective routes for the vans to travel, but also relies on drivers to make decisions based on what he or she deems to be an important part of the road. Everything in the van, he adds, is completely automated. All the driver needs to do is turn on the computers and drive. (via Rochester Times)