Some West Lafayette parks and recreation staff members drew a lot of stares and questions last week as they documented every city park and trail. That’s because it’s tough to ignore city Trail Manager Nick Rawles driving an ATV while wearing the Google Trekker - a camera covered orb mounted atop a space-age looking shoulder harness. Rawles, and Parks Director Jon Munn, learned how to operate the contraption to record every inch of trail and points of interest at every park. “Fifteen cameras that are set up in a panoramic kind of up and down all around above this backpack unit,” Munn explains. Munn says those 15 cameras simultaneously take still photos every two seconds, and all that digital data is shipped off to Google. “Somehow, some way, Google stitches all those still shots together to create what people are familiar with when they look at Google Maps,” he says. The Google Trekker came to West Lafayette as part of a project created by the Indiana Park and Recreation Association.
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