Google has announced Project Tango, an initiative that involves an Android smartphone able to create 3D maps of the world around it.
Google is offering adventurous app developers kits that include a 5-inch Android smartphone with a bevy of sensors on board that can track the full 3D motion of the device. The kit includes development APIs to provide position, orientation, and depth data to standard Android applications. Google wants some of the devices used for projects that explore indoor navigation, mapping, and single/multiplayer games that use physical space.
The rest Google hopes will be used by developers who are “bold” and “creative” to write new apps not yet imagined. In order to get one of the 200 test kits, developers need to submit an application with proposal to Google.
Google hopes to assign the 200 devices to testers by mid-March.
