Google’s Project Ara Modular Smartphone Gets Its Own Developer Conference This April

Google is not abandoning Project Ara, after taking over the ambitious experimental smartphone design concept along with the Advanced Technology and Projects (ATAP) group from Motorola. ATAP only just announced Tango, its 3D-environment sensor for mobile devices, and now it’s revealing a two-day developer conference April 15 and 16 at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View.

Ara, for those who aren’t familiar, is a modular smartphone project that would allow users to swap out interchangeable parts to give their device a different sensor load out, a better camera, more battery power or anything else your heart might desire. You source new sensors from a store that would operate similarly to a hardware version of the Play mobile software marketplace, and theoretically upgrade your phone piecemeal instead of having to buy a brand new one every few years just for a few new highlight features.This is the first in a planned series of Ara dev conferences for 2014, Google says, and this event will focus specifically on the alpha release of the Ara Module Developers’ Kit (MDK) which will hit the web in early April. The free platform will offer developers “everything [they] need” to get up and running building Ara hardware modules, ATAP promises. Limited in-person attendance is available, with a $100 fee ($25 for students) covering food and a special social session. Google is approving these based on the strength of your application, so make it a good one.

Ara is meant to be a one-size fits all solution for smartphones, offering anything to any potential user in the world with its range of modules. That’s a hugely ambitious goal, of course, but in ATAP’s own words, they “like epic shit,” so that aim seems within its scope.

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What is Google’s Project Tango? Google to Revolutionize 3D in Mobile Tech?

Google, known for many mysterious and discreet projects in tech field, has come out with another innovative breakthrough in an experimental Android-powered smartphone with powerful 3D sensors called Project Tango.

The project is part of Google’s Advanced Technology and Projects (ATAP) group and it is still in early stages of development. The first 200 prototypes will be available for developers by mid-March, 2014 and Google is handpicking those whom it would send the prototypes.

“The goal of Project Tango is to give mobile devices a human-scale understanding of space and motion,” Johnny Lee, ATAP’s chief wrote in a Google+ post.

The 3D Android phone will be equipped with a series of 3D sensors capable of taking more than a quarter of a million measurements each second, which will have applications such as gaming, indoor navigation and others.

Google says these devices will directly be vetted by companies in gaming, data processing and navigation, mapping application and other related sectors.

Google, however, has asked interested developers to sign up on Project Tango’s website for a chance to get one of the early prototypes.

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Google unveils Project Tango 3D Android smartphone

Google is offering developers the chance to test the limits of a prototype Android smartphone that can sense 3D motion and geometry.The vendor said the technology could be used to produce indoor maps of buildings, as a navigational aid for the visually impaired, or help people find products in retail environments.The search giant has made 200 prototype developer kits, and said it wants to give them away to people with an interest in “pushing the technology forward” and improving the device’s user experience.

“We have allocated some of these devices [already] for projects in the areas of indoor navigation/mapping, single/multiplayer games that use physical space, and new algorithms for processing sensor data,” the company stated.

The company said interested parties will need to set out their plans for the device, with Google encouraging them to “be creative. Be specific. Be bold”. It also confirmed the prototype devices will be distributed to successful applicants by Friday 14 March.The device is the result of Google’s Project Tango initiative, which the company said has set out to give mobile devices a “human-scale understanding of space and motion”.The project has seen Google collaborate with universities, research labs and other tech firms in nine countries over the past 12 months.

“Project Tango is a focused exploration of what might be possible in a mobile platform. It is not part of Android today,” a statement on the Project Tango website states.

“We are still in the early days as this technology begins the transition out of research labs into the hands of millions of people.

“While we may believe we know where this technology will take us, history suggests we should be humble in our predictions. We are excited to see the effort take shape with every step forward," it added.

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Google’s Project Tango: the Android phone that maps your world in real-time

Imagine a 3D world fully realised on your mobile phone, but not as you know it. Project Tango is the world around us, superimposed into our mobile phones. Now, the video makes it look like a game-changer and after looking at the facts, we’re convinced that it will be. Project Tango’s goal? To make our smartphones look and understand the physical environment. There are 200 development kits and Google aims to ship them all by March 14 2014.Currently, this takes the form of a prototype Android phone fitted with custom hardware that tracks the 3D motion of the device and maps the environment for good measure. The embedded sensors produce more than a quarter million 3D measurements every second to produce an accurate model of the world around the phone. With Java, Unity Game Engine, C/C++ and Android support, Tango is a dream project for any developer, who can sign up directly on the website if they wish to be involved in future projects – just not South Africa, Belgium, Venezuela or anywhere out of America really because “due to regulatory and export control issues, we are unable to send devices to certain countries.”

Google wants developers to work on projects like single or multiplayer games that use the 3D physical space around us, indoor mapping and even create new algorithms for processing sensor date. Or let’s put it like this – imagine the Oculus Rift, a virtual reality unit, combined with Project Tango. It would produce a realtime, 3D world mapped out as you walk and later, the same route could be explored in VR while safely at home. Real adventuring, with actual physical topographical data that’s unique to us. What an incredible thought.These are all technologies we’ve seen before, but what Project Tango does is combine them to create something unique.So what’s next? Nothing palatable or consumer-based. Project Tango is deep underground in the secret Google research centers. “We are still in the early days as this technology begins the transition out of research labs into the hands of millions of people. While we may believe we know where this technology will take us, history suggests we that should be humble in our predictions. We are excited to see the effort take shape with each step forward.”

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Google Project Tango to Bring Kinect-Like 3D Awareness to Smartphones

When Google sold Motorola Mobility to Lenovo for $2.91 Billion at the end of last month, many were worried about what this would mean for the future of the team behind Motorola’s modular smartphone project code named Ara. Then one week ago, the ATAP team announced that it would be moving from Motorola to Google. This naturally lead to speculation regarding whether the ATAP team had anything else cooking in their secret ovens. The answer is now here: Google Project Tango.

In its current form, Project Tango is a working prototype of a 5″ smartphone featuring custom hardware and software that is able to, in their words, “track the full 3D motion of the device, while simultaneously creating a map of the environment.” Then through this custom hardware and environment mapping, the device is able to make over a quarter-million measurements per second, allowing its position and orientation to be updated in real-time. In other words, rather than simply knowing its acceleration and orientation like what is possible with gyroscope and accelerometer sensors in current smartphones, Tango also creates a virtual 3D map of its environment and relative position. The current development prototype (obviously) runs Android, and it includes development APIs capable of delivering position, orientation, and depth data to standard Android apps, as well as the Unity 3D Game Engine.

So what can something like this mean? The possibilities are both far reaching and extremely exciting. For example, rather than simply being able to navigate to a particular destination using GPS, these APIs (along with robust mapping data) could allow shoppers to find exactly what they are looking for in large stores. Similarly, such technology could also be used to help the visually-impaired navigate through unfamiliar areas, or it can even be used as the core technology behind an entirely new genre of augmented reality game, adding greater depth and possibilities than what’s currently possible in games such as Ingress.

But if you stand back and think about what makes all of this possible, Project Tango isn’t truly anything new from a technological standpoint. After all, Microsoft’s Kinect platform uses similar technologies to map objects in 3D space. However, this is the first mobile implementation of this sort. Rather, it’s about implementation and what it can mean for developers in the future. As such, the ATAP team is currently looking for developers to create killer apps for the platform.

Starting in the middle of next month, the ATAP team will disseminate 200 prototype dev kits to developers looking to create innovative applications built atop Project Tango’s core APIs. Developers looking to get in on the Project Tango Dev Kit, head over to the Project Tango page and submit your killer app idea. Who knows, you may get lucky and create an augmented reality version of Flappy Bird.

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