Bsquare Working with Google's Project Tango to Develop New Technologies

Project Tango is being developed by Google's Advanced Technology and Projects (ATAP) to evolve mobile devices so they can have a human- scale understanding of space and motion. What Google is doing in essence is making the mobile device a companion that becomes part of the world you live in by sharing the sense of space and movement by understanding and perceiving the world the same way in which you do. The possible applications of this technology are almost limitless.

Bsquare, enabler of smart connected systems, announced it is now part of this project by making advanced modifications to the Android platform, which supports applications to provide real-time augmented reality images of the user's surroundings. The company will be modifying the imaging subsystems of the device to support advanced depth processing streams, integration of an advanced image co-processor, precise time syncing for real-time performance applications and sophisticated multiple camera processing.

Additionally Bsquare was also involved as a system integrator with managing and maintaining the code repositories with ATAP and the Project Tango team.

"We're excited to work with Google's ATAP group.We love to work with innovative companies like Google to develop game-changing technologies and products. Project Tango is a great example of this," said Mark Whiteside, Vice President of Professional Engineering Services at Bsquare.

The development of this technology is a collaborative effort with universities, research labs and industrial partners covering nine countries around the world spanning 10 years of research in robotics and computer vision for a uniquely new approach of mobile. Google has prototypes ready so developers can start creating innovative solutions by exploring the possibilities of this technology and make them a reality.

The prototype is a 5 inch android phone with an extremely powerful customized hardware and software that has been designed to track the full three-dimensional motion of the device as you carry it while simultaneously creating a map of the environment. These specially designed sensors let the phone make more than a quarter million 3-D measurements every second while at the same time updating its position and orientation in real time and combining the information into a single 3-D model of your location.

While the possibilities of this technology are still being explored one solution that is truly promising is to help the visually impaired by navigating new environments on their own.

Currently the technology is in the hands of developers and Google is eagerly waiting to make it available for the world at large as soon as they work out all the kinks.

"Project Tango strives to give mobile devices a human-like understanding of space and motion through advanced sensor fusion and computer vision, enabling new and enhanced types of user experiences -- including 3D scanning, indoor navigation and immersive gaming," said Johnny Lee, Technical Program Lead, Advanced Technology & Projects at Google.”