Google Announces Project Tango, a 5 inch Android Smartphone that Can Map the World Around You
The goal of Project Tango is to give mobile devices a human-scale understanding of space and motion. The device is a 5 inch Android prototype smartphone equipped with 3D sensors and other components to track motion and map the surroundings around you.
Google has 200 devices that they are preparing to give out to developers who want to build mapping tools, games, and new algorithms that can take advantage of the technology on the prototype smartphone, and these developer editions will ship by 14th March 2014 as planned by Google.
Google’s Advanced Technology and Projects (ATAP) group is the brains behind the project Tango. By now, you might have got an idea of what exactly is Project Tango, now lets see how it works:
The device in the Tango project will work by using a motion tracking camera and a sensor built into the backside of the prototype android smartphone. Once the smartphone is moved around, the sensors will detect everything in front of them, and as a result it will build a 3D map of the surroundings using the data captured.
The Project Tango is capable of doing more as per ATAP, while they emphasize this on being at an early stage, they also believe developers will do wonders with this prototype. Project Tango is result of one year research from ATAP, they worked with universities, research labs, and industrial partners spanning nine countries around the world to harvest research from the last decade of work in robotics and computer vision, concentrating that technology into the prototype smartphone.
This project comes from Google’s Advanced Technology and Projects team, the same team which was associated with Motorola but Google decided to keep them, while they let go Motorola. We will keep you updated with all the latest happenings related to the Project Tango, however, you might want to watch the video below to know more:
[youtube url=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qe10ExwzCqk”]
