New Street View camera by Google

On Tuesday, Google unveiled a new Street View camera.

Google thinks will make it a lot easier to take pictures of the world, particularly in remote spots such as small islands and mountain tops. The camera weighs 15 pounds is modular so it can be customized with different sensors such as lidar when needed; and can quickly be connected to the top of a car's roof rack without needing the car to be customized (which will make it possible to connect it to many more kinds of cars).

As with the current Street View camera, it includes seven individual cameras, each with a 20-megapixel sensor, so it can take 140-megapixel panoramic images.

The camera is cute — even for a surveillance device. It's about the size of a cat or small dog, and its top-most part is blue, with a white circle surrounding each of its large camera lenses (which look like big bug eyes).

Over the past 15 years, Google Street View has connected its cameras to lots of things other than cars, too — think snowmobiles, bikes, backpacks, and even sheep — in its efforts to capture places that are off-road as well. (The sheep were part of an effort initiated by Faroe Islands residents in 2016 to gather pictures for Street View of the archipelago's numerous islands). Biggs said the portability of the new camera will make it useful for these other types of picture-taking, and will make it possible to collect pictures in more remote places more frequently.

The Street View team is testing the new camera near its headquarters in Mountain View, and plans to start using it widely next year.