Google Maps Blog: “With Google Maps by your side, you have a co-pilot for everything from turn-by-turn directions, to discovering new restaurants to deciding which hiking trails to climb next. This is possible in large part because Google Maps includes information from thousands of authoritative sources as varied as the U.S. Geological Survey, the Ordnance Survey of Ireland, and Mexico’s National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI). But even all this isn’t enough to build the most comprehensive map. To give you the highest quality results, we need to fill in details like the right place to turn on an unmarked road and indoor maps of your local museum. Over the years, we’ve created new sources of information to fill in those details. In fact, one of the most important sources for Google Maps is our own Street View imagery. In addition to giving you a way to virtually explore the world, Street View has helped to improve the quality of what we call our “basemap.” With ground-level images, we can identify one-way roads, pinpoint addresses on the map, and verify street names. This added level of detail gives you better search results, more accurate directions, and smoother turn-by-turn navigation. But Street View isn’t the only way we fill in details on Google Maps. Today, we’re releasing six indoor maps created with our new mapping tool called Cartographer. Cartographer is a backpack equipped with Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) technology.”