Google wants to build a new kind of smartphone that is capable of seeing like a human eyes. It is a new experiment which works on Android platform. Google calls it 'Project Tango'.
Motorola's ATAP(Advanced Technology And Products) Team is working on Project Tango and is leaded by Johnny Lee, A Human-Computer Interaction researcher.
Johnny Lee wrote, "The goal of Project Tango is to give mobile devices a human scale understanding of space and motion".
Since many years Google team has been working with universities, research labs and industrial partners from nine different countries around the world to gain research works from the last 10 years of work in robotics and computer vision to consolidate into a unique mobile phone.
Johnny also stated, "Now, we’re ready to put early prototypes into the hands of developers that can imagine the possibilities and help bring those ideas into reality. We hope you will take this journey with us. We believe it will be one worth traveling."
"What if you could capture the dimensions of your home simply by walking around with your phone before you went furniture shopping? What if directions to a new location didn't stop at the street address? What if you never again found yourself lost in a new building?" Johnny said, "The future is awesome. We can build it together,"
Currently Google developed a prototype, a 5 inches phones which contains customized hardware and software designed to track the full 3D motion of the device along with simultaneously creating a map of the environment. These sensors allow the phone to take a quarter million 3D measurements every second, updating its position and orientation in real-time, combining that data into a single 3D model of the space around you.
It runs Android and includes development APIs to provide position, orientation, and depth data to standard Android applications written in Java, C/C++, as well as the Unity Game Engine. These early prototypes, algorithms, and APIs are still in active development.
The Prototype phone comes with Movidius's Myriad 1 vision processor platform, which features ultra-low power computational chips, software and development tools used to enable mobile devices to understand and contextualize their surroundings.
"Google has paved the future direction for smart mobile vision systems and we're excited to be working with a company that shares our vision to usher in the next wave of applications that fundamentally alter how a mobile device is used to experience the world around us," El-Ouazzane said. "Project Tango is truly a groundbreaking platform, and we look forward to seeing the innovation the developer community achieves with unprecedented access to the Movidius Vision Processor."
Google is looking for the professional developers to work on the top of this platform and build applications. Google have kept some devices for itself for projects in the areas of indoor navigation/mapping, single/multiplayer games that use physical space, and new algorithms for processing sensor data.
Google is providing 200 prototype development kits to the developer only who are working in an incorporated entities or institutions due to 'FCC restrictions'. To apply for the prototype, fill this form.
Many universities and development collaborators are working and contributing in 'Project Tango'.
Bosch, BSQUARE, Compal Comm, ETH Zurich, flyby, The George Washington University, hiDOF, MM Solutions, Movidius, University of Minnesota, JPL, Ologic, Omni Vision, Open Source Robotics Foundation, Parcosm, Sunny Optical Technology.
yoyo
ReplyDelete