Project Tango: an augmented reality computing platform

Situation & problem

Project Tango was an augmented reality computing platform developed by Google. It used computer vision to enable mobile devices to detect their position relative to the world around them without using GPS or other external signals. This allowed application developers to create user experiences that include indoor navigation, 3D mapping, physical space measurement, environmental recognition, augmented reality, and windows into a virtual world.

This video shows the early developments of Project Tango by strapping a camera on the helmet of a cyclist in San Francisco, and plotting his trip in Google Maps.

This video shows the early developments of Project Tango by strapping a camera on the helmet of a cyclist in San Francisco, and plotting his trip in Google Maps.

Intermodalics’ solution

We supported the team at Google in developing the Tango SDK and various Tango Android Applications and its rollout on industrial scale.

Outcome

We sped up the development of the team at Google by providing key expertise. Tango pivoted to become ARcore, the AR computing platform on Android devices. The Tango and ARcore integrations with ROS we created on the side are publicly available at https://github.com/Intermodalics/tango_ros