Google Project Tango Dev Kits Make their Way to Developers

Last month, the Google ATAP team announced Project Tango. The Kinect-like Tango, which comes from the same team responsible for Project Ara, aims to bring sensor-based 3D environmental mapping to your smartphone. Ultimately, this means that rather than simply knowing its position in abstract space, a Tango-based mobile device will also know its position relative to its environment. Then a few days after Tango’s unveiling, we saw an early preview that showed off its data acquisition capabilities. Now, select developers are finally starting to receive their Tango dev kits.

So what is life like through the eyes of Tango? Makezine’s Omar Soubra offers a look courtesy of his early dev kit.

As one would expect from 3D scanning technology, Tango seems to do best with nearby objects. Objects farther away tend to suffer from data drift, which also varies due to other factors such as sensor temperature, lighting conditions, number of passes, and more. And as can be seen in the video below, the temporal resolution of the current generation prototype is quite low.

While the initial results are a bit of a mixed bag, let’s not be too judgmental just yet. After all, this is just an initial prototype device, and things are sure to better by the time Tango-based devices reach consumer hands.

Are you looking forward to Tango technology in your future smartphone? Let us know in the comments below!

[Source: Makezine | Via PocketNow]

source: xdadevelopers