Giving devices full 3D vision is the next step in the consumer electronics evolution. It began with Kinect for the Xbox, which is basically a 3D scanner, and, although this process is still in its early phase, that is where all the technology giants seem to be setting their sights. Apple bought Primesense, the company that makes Kinect as well as 3D Systems’ Sense consumer 3D scanner. Primesense technology gives 3D vision to iRobots telepresence robot Ava and similar technologies are in use in famous androids, such as Robonaut on the International Space Station, representing a clear overlap in technologies. And this is exactly the area where innovation goes faster.
Now Google is getting involved. Its Advanced Technology and Research Group (ATAP) is working on Project Tango and is developing a new Android based smartphone that will be able to see the world around it in 3D. What this means is that it will map the environment through a double videocamera and integrated sensors making a quarter of a million measurements each second, constantly updating its position in the environment.
Along with its custom hardware, the 5” smartphone includes development API to provide position, orientation and depth data to standard Android applications written in Java, C/C++ as well as Unity Game Engine. The technology is thus already available: what Google is most struggling with is what it will be used for.
Its technicians are considering all the standard options, which makes sense since they operate primarily in the “virtual world”: gaming, street directions, assistance to the visually impaired, shopping support, “augmented-augmented reality”. These, however, are not real innovations but simply evolutions of current smartphone capabilities.
In my opinion the real innovation will be in the realm of physical photography, 3D modelling and physicalization of surrounding environments and objects through 3D printing interactions. Once you have an accurate 3D representation of a 3D environment it really takes very little to extrapolate virtual objects turning them into .stl files. Any object.
Surprisingly no one mentions 3D printing applications in the Google Tango project presentation. In fact Google is so starved for ideas that it has been giving away 200 prototype dev kits. Unfortunately all available units have been distributed as of today. At 3DPI.com we applied for one on March 11th, while writing this article, in the name of all 3D printing engineers and software developers (who had not yet applied). Hopefully they will hear our plea. In which case we will let you know.
