Google’sProject Tango is amazing , but it ’s taking its sweet time making it to market . This disturbed exotic point of a photographic camera could commute all that . Qualcomm and Google just teamed up to shrink it down to a sizing suitable for your sac .
You ’re looking at the Project Tango Smartphone Development Platform , come afterward this summer . It ’s not the first time Google ’s crammed sensors into a handset — the original Tango was a headphone — but this one hit more sense . For one affair , it ’s a reference excogitation that literal phonemakers can replicate if they ’d like to make Tango product . For another , it ’s got an crucial new sensor .
The secret sauce is a new time - of - flight camera that rent the Tango measure depth without taking up most as much space on the back of the phone . Previously , a Project Tango squad member tell me , the machine used a “ integrated unaccented ” approach . Much like the original Microsoft Kinect , an infrared projector would fire out a radiation pattern , which a separate camera would take to interpret — and that separate camera would postulate to be a way off to give the organisation much accuracy .
Tablet versus phone — note how far apart the camera are
On this version , a time - of - escape camera can calculate depth all by itself , just by measuring how long it ingest for light to dash out , strike an object , and come in back . Which mean it can fit in a much smaller space , which in spell spend a penny thing way simpler for blank - constrained telephone designers .
The time - of - escape camera in action
Otherwise , it ’s fairly much the super - high - end Qualcomm smartphone reference design that handset designers are already familiar with : a Snapdragon 810 central processing unit , a Brobdingnagian 6.1 - inch 2560 x 1600 screenland , anda whole raft of other eyeglasses .
So when can the rest period of us get our bridge player on Project Tango ? Hard to say … but it in spades seems like there ’s a little more impulse now . Google just announced a developer contest that ’ll give out $ 95,000 in prizes , which admittedly is n’t a lot , but it ’s a start . More good news program : There are a whole crew of awesome Tango demo on tap here at I / O.
For instance , I function around with a real Nerf gas pedal firing at robot baddies I could only see through the Tango ’s screen . ( Google teamed up with Hasbro to 3D - print a Project Tango mount . )
In another demonstration , I face a ( sadly featherless ) dinosaur after collect three of its os and placing them on a convenience which open a portal back to the Mesozoic era . by nature !
It ’s sport ! It ’s coolheaded ! It ’s still babe steps … but it ’s a few baby footfall nigher to actually being real .
get in touch with the author at[email protected ] .
Augmented realityGoogleGoogle I / OQualcommSmartphonesTabletsVirtual reality
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