Mobile By James Plafke Feb. 20, 2014 5:34 pm
Aside from Android, Google Maps and the accompanying Street View are some of Google’s most famous inventions. The company has driverless cars safely cruising around and mapping the world just so we can figure out an efficient route to a bar, or so we can explore the Grand Canyon without having to leave the bathroom. Now, Google has announced Project Tango, which is more or less a version of Google’s famed mapping tools that fit right on your smartphone.
Project Tango comes in the form of a prototype Android smartphone that has the capability to learn the layout and dimensions of a space just by moving around within it. It functions by utilizing a depth sensor and motion-tracking camera to discern a given layout and build a 3D map. Google Street View can give you directions from your house to a shopping mall, but it can’t give you directions to a specific boutique inside that mall. With something like Project Tango learning indoor layouts, directions to your favorite one of the three Foot Lockers inside the mall can be included in Google Maps.
A Google car interacts with the world much differently than a human does, so Tango could, in theory, provide Google with the data of the way a human moves and interacts. The initiative could also help developers build better augmented reality games where the in-game objects are much more aware of the environment onto which they’re displayed.
Interestingly, Project Tango comes from the Advanced Technologies and Projects group, one of the only parts of Motorola Google kept when the mobile phone division was sold to Lenovo. Google has 200 of the devices ready to give out to willing developers, but if you’re interested, you’ll need to participate in a Google Glass-style program where you have to tell Google why you deserve one.
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Project Tango comes in the form of a prototype Android smartphone that has the capability to learn the layout and dimensions of a space just by moving around within it. It functions by utilizing a depth sensor and motion-tracking camera to discern a given layout and build a 3D map. Google Street View can give you directions from your house to a shopping mall, but it can’t give you directions to a specific boutique inside that mall. With something like Project Tango learning indoor layouts, directions to your favorite one of the three Foot Lockers inside the mall can be included in Google Maps.
A Google car interacts with the world much differently than a human does, so Tango could, in theory, provide Google with the data of the way a human moves and interacts. The initiative could also help developers build better augmented reality games where the in-game objects are much more aware of the environment onto which they’re displayed.
Interestingly, Project Tango comes from the Advanced Technologies and Projects group, one of the only parts of Motorola Google kept when the mobile phone division was sold to Lenovo. Google has 200 of the devices ready to give out to willing developers, but if you’re interested, you’ll need to participate in a Google Glass-style program where you have to tell Google why you deserve one.
More...
