Google Maps will be updating their Canadian Street View images in the coming weeks by sending out a special bicycle designed to record panoramic views of areas beyond public streets. University campuses, park trails, and quite possibly the interiors of some businesses will be captured by the Street View Trike as it rides through Canada for the first time, starting in Toronto and moving on to Vancouver next.

The timing, as you might guess, has a lot to do with the weather. The plan was to send the special trike out earlier this month, but weather reports made it more favourable to hold off. The bike carries a special array of both cameras and lasers, the latter to record distance measurements for 3D data, that point in all directions including upwards and there’s no system yet that can keep all those lenses clean in the rain.

The company won’t reveal yet which areas of the city will be captured except to say that they have hired special riders who are very familiar with the off-the-beaten-path sections of the city. As they did with images taken by their Street View Car, Google plans to blur any faces or license plates picked up by the cameras to be considerate towards privacy issues. They will also send out the bike at times when they think the least number of people will be present.

This isn’t to say that it will be a stealth operation, both the riders and the bike have been plastered in Google branding, making it clear it’s a Google operation. The riders tell me that people spot them a mile away, and while they tend to mistake the bike for an ice cream vendor at first, they’re still very curious and Google allows their riders to pause and chat with people for a breath.

Plastered in Google logos and pulling a near 400lb bike in this heat, you have to give the riders a special kind of respect, especially when you consider that not everyone welcomes the Street View cameras in their neighbourhood.

Google has been experimenting with different types of Street View vehicles for some time now, even using Canada to launch a special snowmobile for the Winter Olympics. One vehicle they haven’t used in Canada yet in the Street View Trolley, an indoor unit that has been designed for capturing the inside of museums and other institutions.

While Google’s focus in Canada with the Trike will be on parks, campuses, and trails initially, they do admit that they are in discussions with business to use either the bike or potentially the trolley to include the inside of stores, malls, or company lobbies on Google Maps too, either by using the bike or perhaps bringing the trolley north too.

The first Street View Trike images will be from Toronto, then Vancouver and should make their first arrival online sometime this fall.