Google’s new “Project Tango”

Google has just unveiled a new initiative known as “Project Tango” that has the potential to reshape many areas of our lives. This new combination of hardware and software could be of huge benefit to vision-impaired humans, but could also drastically change the state of indoor 3D modeling.

To this point, there have been two ways to view the interior of buildings with Google Earth. We’ve seen a few examples of interior 3D models, which have been very cool but very seldom (and seemingly going away). The other direction Google has gone is with interior Street View imagery, which they continue to rapidly expand upon. Project Tango looks to be an interesting combination of both, using some amazing technology. Here is a quick video to show you what it’s about:

It’ll be quite a while before we see this technology integrated into our devices, but the potential is amazing. In the meantime, if you’re a developer that would like to begin working with Project Tango, fill out the form at the bottom of the main Project Tango to be considered for one of their 200 prototype dev kits. They hope to release the dev kits next month.

What do you think of Project Tango? Amazing potential, or just a fun idea that’s going nowhere?

About Mickey Mellen

Mickey has been using Google Earth since it was released in 2005, and has created a variety of geo-related sites including Google Earth Hacks. He runs a web design firm in Marietta, GA, where he lives with his wife and two kids.

• Twitter
|
• Google+
|
• More Posts (1431)