Google wants developers to get started on making apps compatible with three-dimensional technology, and is enticing them with a new tablet equipped with 3D mapping and sensing capabilities.
True to its form of limiting sales to developers using a sky-high price tag, Google unveiled its Project Tango Tablet, which will be available for $1,024 for the first time at the Google I/O developer conference later in June. The goal is to encourage developers to create new kinds of immersive games and applications based on the unique Project Tango platform.
"Over the next few months, we will be distributing dev kits to software developers to develop applications and algorithms on [Project Tango's] platform," says [video] Johnny Lee, head of Google's Advanced Technology and Projects group responsible for Project Tango. "We are just in the beginning and we know that there's a lot more work to do, but we are excited about where this is gonna go."
The Project Tango tablet is not available to consumers, but its specs are everything a consumer would want to have. The tablet sports a full high-definition 1080p display and features two cameras positioned at a 13-degree angle for 3D mapping. A depth sensor that can make more than a quarter of a million 3D measurements every second is located at the back of the device.
Under the hood, it is powered by the new Nvidia Tegra K1 chipset, has 4GB of RAM and includes 128GB of internal memory. The tablet runs on the latest Android 4.4 KitKat mobile OS and has all the connectivity features, including Wi-Fi, Bluetooth LE and 4G LTE. As if that wasn't enough, Google even went ahead with a few more bells and whistles, including a micro HDMI port and three USB 3.0 ports.
Earlier this year, Google distributed Project Tango smartphones to 200 developers, but the wider screen and better computing power of the tablet allows developers to dream big about their 3D applications.
"Mobile devices today assume that the physical world ends at the boundaries of the screen," says Lee. "Our goal is to give mobile devices a human-scale understanding of space and motion."
3D technology poses a wide range of potential benefits. For example, the Project Tango team believes that 3D can serve as a seeing-eye for visually impaired people, who can use their 3D devices to describe the room they are in. The team also said 3D could be used to build maps that don't end at the user's current destination, indoor navigation systems where GPS doesn't work quite as well, and tools for real estate and design professionals that can help them gather data about a room in an instant.
The possibilities are limited only by what developers can cook up. With the new Project Tango tablet, Google hopes to give them the perfect device to turn 3D dreams into reality.
