Although just recently surfacing publicly, Google has been working on their Project Tango smartphones for a while now. Not all of that research and development on the 3D world sensing phone was confined to the Google campus though. Turns out Google has been working with the NASA Ames Research Center to integrate the Project Tango technology onto a robotic platform called SPHERES. The SPHERES platform is intended to be a zero-gravity autonomous unit.
NASA is developing SPHERES to serve the role of assistant for astronauts or to even be programmed to perform their own maintenance activities on board the International Space Station. Project Tango’s ability to create a 3D map of the world that the device can track as it moves through it is a key part to enabling the SPHERES propulsion capabilities to be useful.
As with all ideas, while it sounds good in theory, one never knows until it is tested out in the real world. Since the targeted environment for the Project Tango equipped SPHERES is the weightlessness of space, this meant some Googlers from the Google ATAP got to spend some time aboard NASA’s Zero G aircraft testing the devices. You can check out the video below showing some of the experience as the team preps for the launch of SPHERES and Project Tango into space later this summer.
Click here to view the embedded video.
source: +Google ATAP
Come comment on this article: Google, NASA test Project Tango equipped SPHERES in Zero G
Google, NASA test Project Tango equipped SPHERES in Zero G
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