Editing Tele Atlas (section)

==Mapping vans==
[[File:Tele Atlas mapping van left side.jpg|thumb|300px|Mapper van with cameras visible on the top of the vehicle and the hard drives cabinet in the customized rear seat.]]
The company keeps its data up-to-date in part through a fleet of dozens of mapping vans equipped with "six cameras, two side-sweeping lasers and a [[GPS navigation device]]."<ref name="cnn120809">[http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/08/12/digital.mapping/index.html Mapping the world, one street at a time], a 12 August 2009 [[CNN]] article</ref>  The vans capture about three photos per second while traveling at normal speeds, resulting in more than 100 million images per year from each van; the images are stored on one of two [[hard disk drive]]s within a metal cabinet inside the van, drives that hold about [[fortnight|two weeks]] of data.<ref name="cnn120809"/>   Meanwhile, the [[3D scanner|3-D scanning]] lasers record the width, height and contours of the first reflective surface they encounter, producing data that when combined with the images create a three-dimension representation.<ref name="cnn120809"/>  Three-dimension representations are already available in Japan and Western Europe; employees at the company's U.S. headquarters in [[Lebanon, New Hampshire]], near [[Dartmouth College]],  expected in August 2009 that by the beginning of 2011, devices based on Tele Atlas data would be able to depict the surroundings in photo-realistic detail.<ref name="cnn120809"/>