Google has been known to come out with some of the wildest and boldest ideas when it comes to pushing the boundaries of innovation. The announcement of Project Tango was an unexpected surprise. For the uninitiated, Google had announced Project Tango, which includes a 5 inch prototype smartphone which runs on Android, but apart from the regular smartphone functions, it also has the additional capability of 3D smart sensors which would be used to create 3-dimensional maps of indoor spaces. Using its 3D sensors, the Project Tango smartphone tracks movement, and builds visual maps using a 3D scanning protocol.
Project Tango, which has been dreamt up by Google’s Advanced Technology and Projects (ATAP), was announced almost a month back when the ATAP group had presented a prototype device. However, now Google has produced the second version of the prototype – Peanut – which has been sent out to 200 handpicked developers to give them a feel of what Project Tango or Peanut is all about, and how they might be able to contribute to the project. One of these developers has released the first images and videos along with his take on the project.
The prototype device is a smartphone, with added sensors. So basically, it is a 5 inch Android phone, with a 4 mega pixels (MP) color camera on the back, a 180 degree wide-angle camera (fisheye), a 3D depth shooting camera which shoots at 320 x 180 pixels @ 5Hz and a front facing camera which has a 120 degree field of vision. These cameras and sensors work in tandem to scan and create a 3D map of the device’s surroundings. Apart from 3D depth scanning, the Peanut device is also capable of infra-red capture effect. In terms of applicability, Project Tango is of immense importance to Google, who would undeniably try to get the device into as many hands as possible, after all how else they would get so many cartographers to work free for them to create indoor maps for their Google Maps service. Also, it might be possible that Google would run a similar program to Google Glass Explorer for Project Tango. We could also see Project Tango get tied up with Google Chrome in the future.
Hit up the Source link below to read the developers’ detailed take on the project, while you can check out these videos below which show the device in action. Once you’re through, do let us know what you think would be the applicability of Project Tango once it sees a world-wide release. Shout it out in the comments below.