Tango (formerly named Project Tango, while in testing) was an

augmented reality Augmented reality (AR) is an interactive experience that combines the real world and computer-generated content. The content can span multiple sensory modalities, including visual, auditory, haptic, somatosensory and olfactory. AR can be de ...

computing platform A computing platform or digital platform is an environment in which a piece of software is executed. It may be the hardware or the operating system (OS), even a web browser and associated application programming interfaces, or other underlying s ...

, developed and authored by the Advanced Technology and Projects (ATAP), a

skunkworks Skunk Works is an official trademark for the Lockheed Martin Advanced Development Programs (formerly Lockheed Advanced Development Projects). Skunkworks or Skunk works may also refer to: * ''Skunkworks'' (album), alternative rock album by Bruce ...

division of

Google Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. ...

. It used

computer vision Computer vision is an interdisciplinary scientific field that deals with how computers can gain high-level understanding from digital images or videos. From the perspective of engineering, it seeks to understand and automate tasks that the hum ...

to enable

mobile device A mobile device (or handheld computer) is a computer small enough to hold and operate in the hand. Mobile devices typically have a flat LCD or OLED screen, a touchscreen interface, and digital or physical buttons. They may also have a physical ...

s, such as

smartphone A smartphone is a portable computer device that combines mobile telephone and computing functions into one unit. They are distinguished from feature phones by their stronger hardware capabilities and extensive mobile operating systems, whic ...

s and tablets, to detect their

position Position often refers to: * Position (geometry), the spatial location (rather than orientation) of an entity * Position, a job or occupation Position may also refer to: Games and recreation * Position (poker), location relative to the dealer * ...

relative to the world around them without using

GPS The Global Positioning System (GPS), originally Navstar GPS, is a Radionavigation-satellite service, satellite-based radionavigation system owned by the United States government and operated by the United States Space Force. It is one of t ...

or other external signals. This allowed application developers to create user experiences that include indoor navigation, 3D mapping, physical space measurement, environmental recognition,

, and windows into a

virtual world A virtual world (also called a virtual space) is a computer-simulated environment which may be populated by many users who can create a personal avatar, and simultaneously and independently explore the virtual world, participate in its activities ...

. The first product to emerge from ATAP, Tango was developed by a team led by computer scientist Johnny Lee, a core contributor to

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...

Kinect Kinect is a line of motion sensing input devices produced by Microsoft and first released in 2010. The devices generally contain RGB cameras, and infrared projectors and detectors that map depth through either structured light or time of flig ...

. In an interview in June 2015, Lee said, "We're developing the hardware and software technologies to help everything and everyone understand precisely where they are, anywhere." Google produced two devices to demonstrate the Tango technology: the Peanut phone and the Yellowstone 7-inch tablet. More than 3,000 of these devices had been sold as of June 2015, chiefly to researchers and software developers interested in building applications for the platform. In the summer of 2015,

Qualcomm Qualcomm () is an American multinational corporation headquartered in San Diego, California, and incorporated in Delaware. It creates semiconductors, software, and services related to wireless technology. It owns patents critical to the 5G, 4 ...

and

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 seri ...

both announced that they were developing Tango reference devices as models for device manufacturers who use their mobile

chipsets In a computer system, a chipset is a set of electronic components in one or more integrated circuits known as a "Data Flow Management System" that manages the data flow between the processor, memory and peripherals. It is usually found on the mo ...

. At CES, in January 2016, Google announced a partnership with

Lenovo Lenovo Group Limited, often shortened to Lenovo ( , ), is a Chinese Multinational corporation, multinational technology company specializing in designing, manufacturing, and marketing consumer electronics, Personal computer, personal computers, ...

to release a consumer smartphone during the summer of 2016 to feature Tango technology marketed at consumers, noting a less than $500 price-point and a small form factor below 6.5 inches. At the same time, both companies also announced an application incubator to get applications developed to be on the device on launch. On 15 December 2017, Google announced that they would be ending support for Tango on March 1, 2018, in favor of ARCore.

Overview

Tango was different from other contemporary 3D-sensing computer vision products, in that it was designed to run on a standalone mobile phone or tablet and was chiefly concerned with determining the device's position and orientation within the environment. The software worked by integrating three types of functionality: * Motion-tracking: using visual features of the environment, in combination with

accelerometer An accelerometer is a tool that measures proper acceleration. Proper acceleration is the acceleration (the rate of change of velocity) of a body in its own instantaneous rest frame; this is different from coordinate acceleration, which is accele ...

and

gyroscope A gyroscope (from Ancient Greek γῦρος ''gŷros'', "round" and σκοπέω ''skopéō'', "to look") is a device used for measuring or maintaining orientation and angular velocity. It is a spinning wheel or disc in which the axis of rota ...

data, to closely track the device's movements in space * Area learning: storing environment data in a map that can be re-used later, shared with other Tango devices, and enhanced with metadata such as notes, instructions, or points of interest *

Depth perception Depth perception is the ability to perceive distance to objects in the world using the visual system and visual perception. It is a major factor in perceiving the world in three dimensions. Depth perception happens primarily due to stereopsis an ...

: detecting distances, sizes, and surfaces in the environment Together, these generate data about the device in "

six degrees of freedom Six degrees of freedom (6DOF) refers to the six mechanical degrees of freedom of movement of a rigid body in three-dimensional space. Specifically, the body is free to change position as forward/backward (surge), up/down (heave), left/right ...

" (3

axes Axes, plural of ''axe'' and of ''axis'', may refer to * ''Axes'' (album), a 2005 rock album by the British band Electrelane * a possibly still empty plot (graphics) See also *Axess (disambiguation) *Axxess (disambiguation) Axxess may refer to: ...

orientation Orientation may refer to: Positioning in physical space * Map orientation, the relationship between directions on a map and compass directions * Orientation (housing), the position of a building with respect to the sun, a concept in building de ...

plus 3 axes of position) and detailed three-dimensional information about the environment. Project Tango was also the first project to graduate from Google X in 2012

Applications Application may refer to: Mathematics and computing * Application software, computer software designed to help the user to perform specific tasks ** Application layer, an abstraction layer that specifies protocols and interface methods used in a c ...

on mobile devices use Tango's C and

Java Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's List ...

APIs to access this data in real time. In addition, an API was also provided for integrating Tango with the

Unity Unity may refer to: Buildings * Unity Building, Oregon, Illinois, US; a historic building * Unity Building (Chicago), Illinois, US; a skyscraper * Unity Buildings, Liverpool, UK; two buildings in England * Unity Chapel, Wyoming, Wisconsin, US; a h ...

game engine A game engine is a software framework primarily designed for the development of video games and generally includes relevant libraries and support programs. The "engine" terminology is similar to the term "software engine" used in the software i ...

; this enabled the conversion or creation of games that allow the user to interact and navigate in the game space by moving and rotating a Tango device in real space. These APIs were documented on the Google developer website.

Applications

Tango enabled apps to track a device's position and orientation within a detailed 3D environment, and to recognize known environments. This allowed the creations of applications such as in-store navigation, visual measurement and mapping utilities, presentation and design tools, and a variety of immersive games. At Augmented World Expo 2015, Johnny Lee demonstrated a construction game that builds a virtual structure in real space, an AR showroom app that allows users to view a full-size virtual automobile and customize its features, a hybrid

Nerf Nerf is a toy brand formed by Parker Brothers and currently owned by Hasbro. Most of the toys are a variety of foam-based weaponry, with other Nerf products including balls for sports such as American football, basketball, and baseball. The ...

gun with mounted Tango screen for dodging and shooting AR monsters superimposed on reality, and a

multiplayer A multiplayer video game is a video game in which more than one person can play in the same game environment at the same time, either locally on the same computing system (couch co-op), on different computing systems via a local area network, or ...

VR app that lets multiple players converse in a virtual space where their

avatar Avatar (, ; ), is a concept within Hinduism that in Sanskrit literally means "descent". It signifies the material appearance or incarnation of a powerful deity, goddess or spirit on Earth. The relative verb to "alight, to make one's appearanc ...

movements match their real-life movements. Tango apps are distributed through

Play Play most commonly refers to: * Play (activity), an activity done for enjoyment * Play (theatre), a work of drama Play may refer also to: Computers and technology * Google Play, a digital content service * Play Framework, a Java framework * Pla ...

. Google has encouraged the development of more apps with

hackathon A hackathon (also known as a hack day, hackfest, datathon or codefest; a portmanteau of hacking and marathon) is an event where people engage in rapid and collaborative engineering over a relatively short period of time such as 24 or 48 hours. Th ...

s, an app contest, and promotional discounts on the development tablet.

Devices

As a platform for software developers and a model for device manufacturers, Google created two Tango devices.

The Peanut phone

"Peanut" was the first production Tango device, released in the first quarter of 2014. It was a small Android phone with a Qualcomm MSM8974 quad-core processor and additional special hardware including a fisheye motion camera, "RGB-IR" camera for

color image A digital image is an image composed of picture elements, also known as ''pixels'', each with ''finite'', '' discrete quantities'' of numeric representation for its intensity or gray level that is an output from its two-dimensional functions f ...

and

infrared Infrared (IR), sometimes called infrared light, is electromagnetic radiation (EMR) with wavelengths longer than those of visible light. It is therefore invisible to the human eye. IR is generally understood to encompass wavelengths from around ...

depth detection, and

Movidius Movidius is a company based in San Mateo, California, that designs specialised low-power processor chips for computer vision. The company was acquired by Intel in September 2016. Company history Movidius was co-founded in Dublin in 2005, by Se ...

Vision processing unit A vision processing unit (VPU) is (as of 2018) an emerging class of microprocessor; it is a specific type of AI accelerator, designed to accelerate machine vision tasks. Overview Vision processing units are distinct from video processing units ...

s. A high-performance accelerometer and gyroscope were added after testing several competing models in the MARS lab at the

University of Minnesota The University of Minnesota, formally the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, (UMN Twin Cities, the U of M, or Minnesota) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Tw ...

. Several hundred Peanut devices were distributed to early-access partners including university researchers in

and

robotics Robotics is an interdisciplinary branch of computer science and engineering. Robotics involves design, construction, operation, and use of robots. The goal of robotics is to design machines that can help and assist humans. Robotics integrat ...

, as well as application developers and technology startups. Google stopped supporting the Peanut device in September 2015, as by then the Tango software stack had evolved beyond the versions of Android that run on the device.

The Yellowstone tablet

Google ATAP's Project Tango tablet (15387052663)

"Yellowstone" was a 7-inch tablet with full Tango functionality, released in June 2014, and sold as the Project Tango Tablet Development Kit. It featured a 2.3 GHz quad-core Nvidia Tegra K1 processor, 128GB flash memory, 1920x1200-pixel touchscreen, 4MP color camera, fisheye-lens (motion-tracking) camera, an IR projector with RGB-IR camera for integrated depth sensing, and

4G LTE In telecommunications, long-term evolution (LTE) is a standard for wireless broadband communication for mobile devices and data terminals, based on the GSM/EDGE and UMTS/HSPA standards. It improves on those standards' capacity and speed by us ...

connectivity. As of May 27, 2017, the Tango tablet is considered officially unsupported by Google.

Testing by NASA

In May 2014, two Peanut phones were delivered to the

International Space Station The International Space Station (ISS) is the largest modular space station currently in low Earth orbit. It is a multinational collaborative project involving five participating space agencies: NASA (United States), Roscosmos (Russia), JAXA ...

to be part of a

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeeding t ...

project to develop autonomous robots that navigate in a variety of environments, including outer space. The soccer-ball-sized, 18-sided polyhedral

SPHERES The Synchronized Position Hold Engage and Reorient Experimental Satellite (SPHERES) are a series of miniaturized satellites developed by MIT's Space Systems Laboratory for NASA and US Military, to be used as a low-risk, extensible test bed for the ...

robots "\n\n\n\n\nThe robots exclusion standard, also known as the robots exclusion protocol or simply robots.txt, is a standard used by websites to indicate to visiting web crawlers and other web robots which portions of the site they are allowed to visi ...

were developed at the NASA

Ames Research Center The Ames Research Center (ARC), also known as NASA Ames, is a major NASA research center at Moffett Federal Airfield in California's Silicon Valley. It was founded in 1939 as the second National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) laborat ...

, adjacent to the Google campus in

Mountain View, California Mountain View is a city in Santa Clara County, California, United States. Named for its views of the Santa Cruz Mountains, it has a population of 82,376. Mountain View was integral to the early history and growth of Silicon Valley, and is the ...

. Andres Martinez, SPHERES manager at NASA, said "We are researching how effective ango'svision-based navigation abilities are for performing

localization Localization or localisation may refer to: Biology * Localization of function, locating psychological functions in the brain or nervous system; see Linguistic intelligence * Localization of sensation, ability to tell what part of the body is a ...

and navigation of a mobile free flyer on ISS.

Intel RealSense smartphone

Announced at Intel's Developer Forum in August 2015, and offered to public through a Developer Kit since January 2016. It incorporated a RealSense ZR300 camera which had optical features required for Tango, such as the fisheye camera.

Lenovo Phab 2 Pro

Lenovo Phab 2 Pro was the first commercial smartphone with the Tango Technology, the device was announced at the beginning of 2016, launched in August, and available for purchase in the US in November. The Phab 2 Pro had a 6.4 inch screen, a Snapdragon 652 processor, and 64 GB of internal storage, with a rear facing 16 Megapixels camera and 8 MP front camera.

Asus Zenfone AR

Asus Zenfone AR, announced at CES 2017,ASUS announcement at CES 2017
-YouTube was the second commercial smartphone with the Tango Technology. It ran Tango AR & Daydream VR on Snapdragon 821, with 6GB or 8GB of RAM and 128 or 256GB of internal memory depending on the configuration.

References

External links

*
Project Tango developer site (API and documentation)

Project Tango developer community

Project Tango Smartphone Development Platform page at Qualcomm

"Intel Expands Developer Opportunities As Computing Expands Across All Areas of Peoples' Lives"
Intel Developer Forum. 20 August 2015.
"Google and Intel bring RealSense to phones with Project Tango dev kit"
Engadget. 18 August 2015.
"Google I/O 2015 - Project Tango - Mobile 3D tracking and perception"
Johnny Lee, Google I/O 2015. YouTube. 29 May 2015.
"Project Tango Concepts"
Johnny Lee, YouTube. 21 April 2015.
"Project Tango Tablet Teardown"
iFixit. 15 August 2014. {{Authority control Computer vision 3D imaging Augmented reality Navigation Mobile technology Google hardware Products and services discontinued in 2018