Google has big plans for Project Tango this year, report says

The company is ramping up Project Tango, its technology for 3D-sensing smartphones and tablets, and hopes to eventually make the technology "ubiquitous," according to a new report in Bloomberg.

That plan is primarily centered around indoor mapping and virtual reality, according to the report, which is on line with what we've previously heard about Tango. Project Tango, if you remember, uses a combination of computer vision and motion sensors to create 3D experiences on smartphones and tablets. In addition to the accelerometer, gyroscope and camera that most smartphones are equipped with, Project Tango devices come with additional sensors that enable them to better track depth and motion.

Mashable saw an early demo of Project Tango's indoor navigation experience earlier this year with Lenovo. (Lenovo has partnered with Google on the hardware side to make the smartphones and tablets that can use Tango's technology.)

But Google's plans are apparently much bigger than just mapping out indoor spaces like museums and shopping malls. The company reportedly wants to leverage Tango to map out indoor spaces the same way Google has mapped outdoor ones with Google Maps. 

But mapping isn't the only use case Google has in mind for Tango. The technology is also likely to be a huge factor in Google's plans for virtual reality. As we've previously noted, the specialized sensors on Project Tango devices could easily enable game developers to make much more immersive experiences than the they could on typical smartphones and tablets. Earlier reports have also suggested Google is working on a standalone VR headset, separate from Cardboard.

There are other signs Google is getting closer to spinning Tango out of its experimental stage. As Bloomberg points out, there are four sessions (including one on VR gaming) devoted to Project Tango on the schedule for next week's I/O developer conference (there was one in 2015).

Luckily, that means we don't have much longer to wait to hear more about Google's vision for Project Tango. Mashable will be reporting live from Google I/O next week so stay tuned for more updates.

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