Android By Russell Holly Apr. 17, 2014 8:00 am
One of Google’s many ATAP projects was recently put under the iFixit scalpel, revealing a simple phone with lots of interesting hardware inside.
There’s no shortage of technology out there geared towards the application of depth mapping right now. Microsoft’s Kinect accessory is probably the most commonly used in a household environment, and it works so well that the tech is often repurposed for other fun projects. The problem so far has been that it’s difficult to make that technology smaller and still make it useful, but Project Tango hopes to change that.
It’s a smartphone with what looks like two cameras on the back, which are capable of processing depth and motion the same way people do. In order to do that, the phone needs to be equipped with some relatively specialized hardware and software. Thanks to iFixit, we’ve got a closer look at the first part of that equation.
The iFixit teardown of Project Tango revealed a prototype phone that is incredibly easy to take apart and repair. This isn’t exactly surprising, since Google is likely working on a rapid iteration system, and being able to swap out hardware or make quick tweaks on the fly would be important at this point in their development process.
The team at iFixit feels that this is an example of how phones could be well made and still be repairable, but they seem to gloss over the fact that this phone is a giant white brick that won’t ever comfortably fit in your front pocket.
Under the hood, iFixit revealed the hardware that Tango uses to see the way that we see. This includes an infrared projector and a pair of cameras on the back of the phone, and a single camera on the front. The front facing camera has a 120º field of view, so it is capable of recording the same space that the human eye can see. The rear cameras are a black and white sensor with a fish eye lens to capture motion, and a sensor that captures both RGB and the IR that has been projected by the other sensor. All of this works together to create a depth map, and make it so there’s as little blurring as possible when moving the phone around.
Whether or not Project Tango’s tech becomes a feature of future commercial smartphones has yet to be seen. What you see here is an incredibly cool concept from a team that is trying to advance the state of computer vision, and while it may be a while before that translates into something useful for the average consumer, it’s clear that the industrial uses for this kind of technology in such a small package is significant.
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There’s no shortage of technology out there geared towards the application of depth mapping right now. Microsoft’s Kinect accessory is probably the most commonly used in a household environment, and it works so well that the tech is often repurposed for other fun projects. The problem so far has been that it’s difficult to make that technology smaller and still make it useful, but Project Tango hopes to change that.
It’s a smartphone with what looks like two cameras on the back, which are capable of processing depth and motion the same way people do. In order to do that, the phone needs to be equipped with some relatively specialized hardware and software. Thanks to iFixit, we’ve got a closer look at the first part of that equation.
The iFixit teardown of Project Tango revealed a prototype phone that is incredibly easy to take apart and repair. This isn’t exactly surprising, since Google is likely working on a rapid iteration system, and being able to swap out hardware or make quick tweaks on the fly would be important at this point in their development process.
The team at iFixit feels that this is an example of how phones could be well made and still be repairable, but they seem to gloss over the fact that this phone is a giant white brick that won’t ever comfortably fit in your front pocket.
Under the hood, iFixit revealed the hardware that Tango uses to see the way that we see. This includes an infrared projector and a pair of cameras on the back of the phone, and a single camera on the front. The front facing camera has a 120º field of view, so it is capable of recording the same space that the human eye can see. The rear cameras are a black and white sensor with a fish eye lens to capture motion, and a sensor that captures both RGB and the IR that has been projected by the other sensor. All of this works together to create a depth map, and make it so there’s as little blurring as possible when moving the phone around.
Whether or not Project Tango’s tech becomes a feature of future commercial smartphones has yet to be seen. What you see here is an incredibly cool concept from a team that is trying to advance the state of computer vision, and while it may be a while before that translates into something useful for the average consumer, it’s clear that the industrial uses for this kind of technology in such a small package is significant.
More...
