Google's Advanced Technology and Projects group

Though Google marked deal to sell Motorola Mobility to Lenovo for $2.9 billion, motorola's best division - Advanced Technology and Projects group was not sold and it was left behind with Google. Since then this group have been working on two major projects - Project Tango & Project Ara.

Project Tango is an Android-based prototype 5-inch phone and developer kit with advanced 3D sensors. With the sensors, the phone is capable of tracking motion, and can build a visual map of rooms using 3D scanning. Google wants to combine these 3D sensors with advanced computer vision techniques that will help fork out newer innovations for indoor navigations, games and so on. Looks like Google wants to build something like the Sony Kinect or Playstation Move, into a small 5-inch phone.

Google is using Movidius’ Myriad 1 vision processor platform for Project Tango. These sensors were considered very expensive and difficult to employ earlier. They are reportedly also known to drain the phone’s battery rapidly. However, the new generation vision processors consume significantly lesser power. This is one of the reasons, why Google finally went ahead with this project.

The Project Tango devices will be available for developers so they can play around and build apps related to “indoor navigation/mapping, single/multiplayer games that use physical space, and new algorithms for processing sensor data.” However, initially, select 200 developers will be able to access these phones. Developers will have to give Google some cool app ideas for the device by March 14, 2014. It should be noted that Google is not looking for simply leap-motion based or gesture-based apps.

On the other hand, Project Ara is a free, open hardware platform for creating highly modular smartphones. It comes with a structural frame that holds smartphone modules of the owner’s choice, such as a display, keyboard or say the battery. The approach allows users to swap out malfunctioning modules or upgrade as new innovations emerge. This also means that the handset can potentially last much longer than normal smartphones do.

Google, the software giant, will also be marking Google’s first hardware launch from its Advanced Technology and Projects group with Project Tango while working side-by-side on Project Ara.