Possible Google Street Car

I happened to be driving along a freeway in the bay area and saw a odd looking vehicle to my right. I didn't hesitate to take some pictures on my iPhone for further inspection when I wasn't driving.

                                      

Theres is a couple things to note about the vehicle and what we can see from the pictures.

• It's a 2nd Generation Prius for great gas mileage covering lot's of roads.
• It appears to have cameras facing each of the 4 directions the car is oriented
• It has other sensors on it's roof (speculation below [and in the comments below!])
• It has a wheel sensor

So as I was driving, I was freaking out that I was actually looking at a possible Google street view car. I started to stick my tong out and make some funny faces (even though Google would probably blur those out). I then took the photos above with my phone. The guy in the car eventually noticed me and didn't seam to mind my picture taking and just kept driving. He kept a pretty constant even speed (60-65mph) and had a nice screen facing the driver seat with some computers. This doesn't follow the typical stereotype for a Google street view car with it's camera much lower and Google already collected street view for this road.

       Another possible explanation for this vehicle is a Caltrans Photolog Vehicle. This is a project that Caltrans implemented some years back to document the highways, possibly saving a site visit for it's workers. The amount of sensors on this vehicle could hint that this was a project run by neither of these two companies.

     Ill speculate on the different sensors on this vehicle below here, but leave it open in the comments as to what sensors might actually be on the car.

• GPS, WIFI, Cell Tower Reception , Accelerometer, gyroscope
• Laser ranger sensor to detect distance
• Wheel sensor for speed, acceleration, height of vehicle/cameras, shock performance and evenness of pavement

I would have loved to see a sensor somewhere under the car to take high resolution photos of the actual road the vehicle travels over to analize for cracks and pot holes. I leave it open to you to discuss what this car was doing, and who is sponsoring it.

Update: This could be part of Google Autonomous Vehicle Driving Research/Project.