Perturbed by the fact that Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) has never featured the Faroe Islands in its Google Maps Street View, local tourist Durita Dahl Andreassen took note of this fact and decided to do something about it.
Andreassen works with a local organization, and she was granted the mandate of making Street View for the Faroe Islands a reality. The Faroe Islands are considered one of the most beautiful places in the world. Andreassen identified that there is a large population of sheep on the island at almost twice the number of people that live there. It is also one of the few places where sheep roam freely in the wild. Andreassen decided to get creative by taking advantage of the largest resource in the island. She, together with her team, attached a 360-degree camera on the back of sheep.
The camera is powered by a solar panel that is also mounted on the sheep. Using the sheep was not only ideal because of their number but also because most of the scenic views in the Faroe Islands are not accessible by road. However, the sheep can move around anywhere on the island and easily capture such views. The project was given the name Sheep View 360. It was initiated through a hashtag campaign called #wewantgooglestreetview whose aim was to reach out to Google so they would launch the street view project in the islands. However, sheep became an easy alternative to carry out the task.
Mounting the camera on the sheep was not an easy task. The ideal of using a solar panel to charge the camera was brought up after the team discovered that the two-hour battery life on the camera would not be enough since sheep graze the whole day. The set up also includes an Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) iPhone and is set up to send images in intervals of one minute.