Project Tango Makes A 3D Map Of The World
Just a few days ago we told you about one of Google’s most interesting projects to date: Project Ara. Project Ara aims to develop a free, open hardware platform for creating highly modular smartphones. You will be able to replace modules from an Ara smartphone and improve individual features of the smartphone (such as the camera, or System on Chip) as technology progresses. The first commercially available Ara smartphone could be released next year and the low budget version could be as cheap as fifty bucks.
Project Ara is one of the most innovative projects we have heard of in the past couple of years and it was originally started by the Advanced Technologies group which was part of Motorola Mobility, which was a subsidiary of Google. However, as you know, Google sold Motorola to Lenovo but decided to keep the Advanced Technology and Projects (ATAP) group to work on Project Ara under the Android division of Google. However, Google’s Advanced Technology and Projects (ATAP) group also began another project, besides Project Ara. This other project is Project Tango and it is an Android smartphone that can understand, memorize and map the world as you use it. The real world. If, like us, you thought Project Ara was impressive, wait until you read about Project Tango.
According to the ATAP group within Google, the smartphone will be able to measure a room’s dimensions and learn them as you use the smartphone. All you need to do is use the smartphone while walking around the room and the smartphone will learn, understand and memorize the dimensions and shape of the room. The end goal of Project Tango is the development a smartphone that can be able to learn and understand the size, dimensions and shapes of the places you visit, and ultimately be able to offer you directions to any place that you want to visit.
You now have an idea about how ambitious Project Tango is. Google’s Advanced Technology and Projects (ATAP) group is slowly but surely becoming one of the most innovative groups inside Google, together with the Google X group. ATAP group’s ideas are probably what determined Google to keep it instead of selling it together with Motorola and judging by Project Ara and Project Tango, Google made the right choice. Project Tango lead, Johnny Lee, lead said: “The goal of Project Tango is to give mobile devices a human scale understanding of space and motion“. Google will send abut two hundred smartphones that are capable of mapping the real world, to developers that intend to develop mapping software for them. All project Tango prototypes will be sent to developers by this week.
The way Project Tango smartphones are able to understand and map the world around is very simple and it involves a motion tracking camera and a depth sensor, both of which are located in the back of the device. Project Tango smartphones use their motion tracking cameras to understand their orientation while moving and the deptsh sensor will continuously scan the area around and make a virtual 3D map. The initial goal was to make a smartphone that is able to scan and map interiors, but the applications of such a device are far more than that.
Imagine what such a smartphone could mean for blind people. After initial use, the smartphone learns the layout of the room, of the building and people with disabilities can use the Tango smartphone to navigate with ease and precision. They could even use it outdoors, though we may be thinking too far at the moment. Another use we can see for a Tango smartphone is to take reality augmented games to a new level; imagine playing a game in your room, but virtually. There are already 3D scanners that can do this, but with a Tango smartphone you won’t need additional hardware.
While Project Tango is still in its infancy (regardless of the fact that prototypes will be sent to developers by the end of this week), Google is confident that the project will be successful, which means that it will be commercially available in the near future. Thanks to Google’s decision to keep the Advanced Technology and Projects (ATAP) group from Motorola, all the innovative projects born at the ATAP group now have a chance to be completed. And we have to say that both Project Ara and Project Tango are innovative and manage to amaze in the same way that Google X’s projects amaze us.
Last month, Google demoed a prototype Tango smartphone running Android. Matterport, a company that offers a major breakthrough in high quality, rapid 3D visualization of physical spaces, was among the first companies to receive prototypes of Tango smartphones. The demo depicts a Project Tango smartphone in tandem with Matterport’s own software, which captures two things: a 3d model of what the Tango smartphone’s camera sees (the depth sensor is also responsible for the creation of the 3d models) and color data also from what the Tango smartphone’s camera can see.
Project Tango prototypes apparently feature a 4 MP motion tracking camera and while it seems to be too low for today’s standards, for the purpose of 3D mapping it is more than enough as it offers a very high resolution. You can . As you can see this first look at Project Tango is pretty impressive and there is a real chance that the ATAP group, under Google’s supervision, is going to transform Project Tango from a dream to a real product.
We mentioned above that Project Tango’s leader is Johnny Lee. Given his previous experience in the field of human – computer interaction. Before working for Google, Johnny Lee was a core member of Microsoft’s Kinect (a line of motion sensing input devices by Microsoft for the Xbox 360 and the Xbox One video game consoles) development team. He also extended the functionality of the Wii Remote controller, by taking advantage of its high resolution IR (infrared) camera. Finally, Johnny Lee became a Google employee three years ago and it seems that he still has a word to say in the industry.
Also, it is worth mentioning that while the ATAP group was the one that came up with the original idea, to get the project to the current state (that of a fully functioning prototype) Google received help from many research institutions and universities. This month all two hundred Tango smartphone prototypes will reach their destination and Google will be able to advance to the next step of the research and development phase for Project Tango. Working on both Project Ara (the modular smartphone) and Project Tango (the 3D mapping smartphone), the Advanced Technology and Projects (ATAP) group within Google is slowly becoming our favorite division of the American corporation. We can’t wait to see both Project Ara and Project Tango being completed and released to the general public. You can leave your thoughts on ATAP group’s Project Tango (and even on the group’s other project, Project Ara) in the comments section below.
