SPOTTED! Google Street View Car in Town

Spotting the Google Car in your neck of the woods is a good sign that maps of the area will soon be more accurate than ever before. Google's Street View feature takes 360-degree pictures for their maps, giving you the sensation that you are walking along the street.

News 5 spotted the funny-looking vehicle driving around WKRG Studios this week, so a group of employees followed it! But we're not the only ones. Almost 100 people commented on our Facebook Page saying they saw the car in places like Chickasaw, Daphne, Semmes, Washington County, and Gulf Shores.

Google started this project in just five cities back in 2007. Now they have a fleet of cars on all seven continents.

There are 15 cameras mounted on a pole attached to the top of the car. It has high-resolution panoramic capabilities. It also has motion sensors to track its position, a hard drive to store data, and lasers to determine distance. They're constantly taking flat pictures, then piece them together and re-project them onto a sphere so it appears 3-D.

As you can imagine it's a complicated process. Google has to make sure the sun is high enough so shadows don't obscure buildings. They also don't want rain or fog to blur the images. In order to drive in the best weather possible, they start in the Southern states and move North as it gets warmer.

You can test out the "Street View" for yourself by typing in a location to the Google Maps Search Bar. Drag the image of the little yellow person to the map. If the Google Car has driven past that location, chances are you can see it on the screen.