New features announced today at a live event in Paris show how Google uses artificial intelligence to bring its vision of a more immersive and intuitive map to life.
With these updates, Google Maps is making it easier to explore, navigate, and make sustainable choices, whether it’s driving an electric car or exploring a new city on foot.
Immersive viewing
The all-encompassing view, which allows you to explore a place virtually, is now rolling out in London, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco and Tokyo.
The immersive view of Google Maps uses advances in artificial intelligence and computer vision to combine billions of Street View and aerial imagery to create a rich digital model of the world.
Moreover, immersive display layers useful information on top such as
Weather, traffic, and how busy the place is.
In a blog post, Google explains that it uses Neural Radiation Fields (NeRF), an advanced AI technology, to create these photorealistic scenes and turn ordinary images into 3D representations.
NeRF technology accurately recreates the full context of a place, including lighting, material texture, and what’s in the background, so you can get a feel for a place before you visit it.
In addition to the five cities mentioned above, immersive view will soon be available in Amsterdam, Dublin, Florence, and Venice.
Search using Live View
Live View is a Google Maps search feature that uses artificial intelligence and augmented reality to help you find nearby locations, such as restaurants, parks, transit stations, and ATMs, simply by holding your phone while you walk.
It provides information such as business hours, current level of activity, and ratings, allowing you to make informed decisions and save time.
Live View recently launched in London, Los Angeles, New York, Paris, San Francisco and Tokyo and will soon expand to Barcelona, Dublin and Madrid.
A live indoor view, which uses AR arrows to guide you to locations such as bathrooms, lounges, taxi booths, and car rentals, has been introduced in the US, Zurich, and Tokyo.
Indoor Live View expands to more than 1,000 new airports, train stations and shopping centers in cities including Barcelona, Berlin, Frankfurt, London, Madrid, Melbourne, Paris, Prague, Sao Paulo, Singapore, Sydney and Taipei.
New map features for EV drivers
New Google Maps updates for electric vehicle drivers include the addition of charging stations for short trips, which Maps will suggest based on factors such as current traffic, charge level, and power consumption, as well as high-speed charging stations, which can fill your car in less than 40 minutes.
In addition, charging stations will appear in search results when places like supermarkets have charging stations on-site.
Google Maps continues to push the boundaries of AI technology to create a more comprehensive and intuitive navigation experience.
Recent updates, including pan and live view, bring a new level of detail and interactivity to the map, allowing users to virtually explore places, find locations, and make sustainable choices.
Featured image: Tada Images / Shutterstock
