In this week’s top stories: Google’s upcoming standalone Android VR headset, OnePlus 3 leaks, Galaxy Note 6 gets a release date, and we take a look at official accessories for the Galaxy S7 Edge, new apps, & much more. Head below for the usual roundup of links to all this week’s most shared stories and video.
Google is planning on tapping into its Project Tango technology to offer superior interior 3D mapping of buildings and a new revenue stream through virtual reality apps using the platform, Bloomberg reports.
Lenovo announced today that it will be bringing its second annual Tech World to San Francisco on June 9th. As well as bringing together some industry leaders to discuss the latest developments in virtual reality, smart connected devices and cloud technology, Lenovo will launch some new products. One of them will be the first consumer Project Tango-equipped Android smartphone.
Update 2: People familiar with the matter have said that this isn’t an internal codename for a future project, but rather just referencing the concept of iterative “++” in programming.
Update: Taylor’s LinkedIn profile has been updated to redact mentions of Cardboard++: “In January I began working with the Cardboard team.” Previous version can be seen in a screenshot below.
We know that VR has become much more central to Google’s ambitions lately, but what exactly might the company be working on? According to some evidence scattered across the web, one project in the works might be called “Cardboard++,” a collaboration between the Project Tango augmented reality team and the Cardboard virtual reality team…
Google and chipmaker Movidius have announced a partnership to bring low-power computer vision to mobile devices. The chip maker has worked with Google in the past and is responsible for powering Project Tango devices.
At CES today, Google and Lenovo announced a partnership to bring the first consumer Project Tango device to the market. The Lenovo-made smartphone will be the first Project Tango offering that consumers will have the chance to try. Google touts that Project Tango transforms your smartphone into “a magic lens that lets you place digital information on your physical world.”
Windows 10 has a feature that can unlock a computer with a face in lieu of a password. The so called Windows Hello takes advantage of Intel’s RealSense camera and technology. Today, Intel is releasing a smartphone developer kit that has RealSense cameras, and also support for Google’s Project Tango…
Google and Intel have developed what looks like the ultimate augmented reality smartphone, combining Google’s Project Tango tech to map and track 3D environments with Intel’s RealSense camera sensor, which isolates and scans 3D objects within those environments.
Engadget reports that the two companies have so far produced a developer prototype of the smartphone, with a consumer device expected to be released further down the line. While there will doubtless be serious applications for the technology, it’s augmented reality gaming that is likely to get the most attention …
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Starting today, the Project Tango Development Kit tablet is available to purchase in the Google Store — beyond the United States — for developers in South Korea and Canada. And on August 26th, it’ll be available in quite a few more places: Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.
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Google’s Tango tablet
Earlier this week, Google made its Project Tango tablet available to everyone via the Google Store for $512. While many expected this price drop and public availability to lead to a successor at Google I/O, the company kept quiet and didn’t address its Tango initiative. Nevertheless, Qualcomm this evening has taken the wraps off of its own Tango smartphone platform powered by the Snapdragon 810.
Google’s Project Tango initiative was originally introduced last year alongside a tablet with “advanced vision capabilities.” Until today, the tablet had only been available with an invite, but now the device is listed on the Google Store for anyone to purchase (via Android Police). Google dropped the price of the tablet for invitees to $512 earlier this year and that’s also the price for which the device is available on the Play Store.
Project Tango is still being sold on an invite-only basis, but some users are now receiving an email offering the tablet at half-price. The developers’ kit was previously being sold at a somewhat-steep $1,024, but is currently being offered to some invitees at a “Special Price” of $512. (Once again, I’d like to take this opportunity to appreciate the clever prices that Google has picked for the kit.)
ATP head Regina Dugan with some of her 100-strong team
Google’s mobile-focused research group, Advanced Technology and Projects (ATP), gives projects a maximum of two years’ work before they are killed, adopted as official Google products or sold to outside companies, reports the WSJ.
The deadline was created by former DARPA head Regina Dugan in an attempt to counter the normal tendency of companies to grow less nimble and more bureaucratic as they grow in size, said Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt.
Product cycles slow down as a company gets larger. All of us believe we could execute faster […]
We like this model because it puts pressure on people to perform and do relevant things or stop. I’ve spent an awful lot of time on projects that never end and products that would never ship.
The company is ruthless about killing off projects which don’t deliver notable results, said Dugan, who was hired by Google in 2012, and it doesn’t always let them run as long as two years …
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Google has announced that Project Tango, the 3D mapping tech currently formerly in development in the company’s Advanced Technology and Projects division is moving on to a home of its own.
The Google+ post announcing the change didn’t provide specifics about where exactly the Tango tech will be moving, but it seems the company is pleased with the progress it’s made so far and is willing to invest some additional resources to continue the work.
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kM3BPixFVq0]
Drones are a lot of fun, but making them to exactly what you want them to isn’t always easy, and a fair number of them are damaged or destroyed in crashes. Skydio, a startup formed by ex-MIT and Google X engineers, is hoping to change that by turning your smartphone into a ‘magic wand’ controller, reports TechCrunch.
To demo its auto-pilot system, it’s built a drone “magic wand” that lets you direct a drone by simply pointing your phone where you want it go. That means you don’t need the traditional, clunky dual joystick drone controller.
Today’s drones use cameras to allow you to shoot photos and video, and feed the video back to your phone or controller. What Skydio does is use that same video feed to construct a 3D map of the surroundings and feed it to the drone’s flight controller, so it can automatically avoid obstacles.
The team demonstrated the technology by flying a radio-controlled aircraft at speed through an underground parking garage, and a drone through a cluttered office–seen in the above video.
Some of today’s drones have ‘follow me’ functions aimed at those into action sports like mountain biking and skiing, but Skydio believes that using 3D mapping will allow a drone to perform this kind of function far more intelligently, using its awareness of the terrain to ensure the best possible coverage of your heroic endeavors.
The team plans to partner with drone manufacturers, and recently raised $3M in seed capital to create the custom hardware to pitch it to drone makers.
Google is taking a different approach with its Project Tango 3D interior mapping technology, which uses a grid of infra-red emitters to map its surroundings.
Project Tango popped up on the Play Store last month, but it has since sit there unavailable for purchase for anyone except those who registered for the device development kit at I/O. These lucky humans got access to the “Add to cart” button shortly after it showing up on the Play Store, but until today, that seemed to be the only way to purchase the device. Now, it appears certain developers are being invited by email…
Earlier this year Google announced the Project Tango tablet with “advanced vision capabilities” that would be coming at an undisclosed date in 2015, with a development kit coming near the end of this year. Now, as noted by Android Central, the tablet has finally popped up on the Google Play Store. It’s not showing on the store’s Devices page just yet, but the listing is accessible if you have the link.
At the moment shoppers won’t be able to buy the prototype tablet which includes an NVIDIA Tegra K1 CPU, 4GB of RAM, and 128GB of storage. It also comes with a motion tracking camera and integrated depth sensors.
Have you been wondering what makes Google’s 3D mapping Project Tango tablet tick? The tinkerers at iFixit have managed to get their hands on the device and performed a little exploratory surgery on the device in the name of science. According to the DIY repair site, some of Project Tango’s entrails resemble Microsoft’s Kinect motion tracker, which kind of makes sense.
Robots aboard the International Space Station will soon be equipped with depth sensing smartphones courtesy of Google. The space-ready handsets will be from the search giant’s Project Tango initiative that uses 3D image tracking technology to map their surroundings. The phones with hitch a ride on a cargo spacecraft scheduled to launch on July 11th and will be the eyes and ears of NASA’s Synchronized Position Hold, Engage, Reorient, Experimental Satellites (SPHERES).
During a session at its I/O developer conference today, Google announced that it’s partnering with LG to build a tablet that’s part of its Project Tango program to release to consumers next year. Google earlier this month announced that it was releasing a prototype Tango tablet, but only for developers. The version made by LG will be intended for consumers, and presumably, cheaper than the $1024 developer version.
Google’s annual I/O conference is only two days away but leaks and rumors leading up to this year’s show have been going strong for quite a while. In an effort to brace ourselves for Mountain View’s latest contributions to the tech world, we’ve decided to discuss what we might be seeing in the next couple of days. While some of these items are a given, others are a mix of rumors and speculation. There’s no guarantee that everything listed here will be announced during I/O, but we eventually expect to see these projects from Google at some point in time. That being said, here are some things that we might see this year in San Francisco.
Google has just announced a official development kit for its Project Tango. The tablet is incredibly powerful, packing an NVIDIA Tegra K1 processor and 4GB of RAM. It’s also got 128GB of storage under the hood. There’s also all kinds of sensors, insulting motion tracking cameras, integrated depth sending, and LTE. There are three cameras on the back of the device for motion tracking, too.
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RE1YHlI1XHo#t=56]
Google’s Project Tango 3D interior mapping technology, which will shortly be appearing in a tablet, is also taking to the air. A team from University of Pennsylvania led by Professor Vijay Kumar are using a Tango-equipped smartphone to enable a quadrocopter to navigate the interior of a building …
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According to a new report out of the Wall Street Journal, Google is currently developing a new tablet that features “advanced vision capabilities.” The report claims that the company plans to produce 4,000 prototypes of the device as early as next month and release it shortly thereafter, before Google I/O at the end of June. Although, we’ll most likely hear a lot about it at I/O, with it perhaps even being the free giveaway to developers.