Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Trimble is Ready to Tango”.
My name is omar subra and i’m with trimble navigation, i’m so excited to be here at meg’s office in berkeley. For the very first time we got the opportunity to present at google i or our some of the applications, which are concept applications for the tango device. The project tango device project tango was introduced. I believe earlier this year, probably in march as a concept device that was able to capture the information in 3d around it, so that the device would be self aware of its environment and you could actually interact with it and the device will be able to see What you see, but, in addition of just having standard cameras, these devices include a 3d scanner. The way the device works. Is you have several components to make this self-awareness of its environment? It has two cameras.
One is pretty much a standard camera, the other one is a 170 degree, spherical camera that is being used for motion tracking. So as you move the device it’s tracking where it is, it also has some imus, as it says in there. So combining those information brings. You, the location and the motion of the device, the most important, interesting things for me, because i have been into 3d scanning since the late 90s is that it integrates the small sensors that projects an infrared laser and capture the information in 3d. So it creates a point cloud so when you combine motion tracking as well as detection of surfaces, you’re able to recreate your entire world, so we got invited at google. I o with three other companies to present the applications that were developed that we have developed on there. We did two applications, one for all, our sketchup users around the world, the ability to finally being able to capture very precisely your entire room, your entire apartment, very fast inside a the tango device and create a sketchup model.
This application is got is called sketchup scan. It enables you to walk around your room, scan your corners or scan your walls and then that automatically creates your sketchup model. You can then edit it and add your furnitures, your windows, your doors, everything that is around, but at least you get the exact copy of your apartment into sketchup as your base.
So you can imagine for architects, for people like you and me like want to change their basement, the furnitures. All of these things. That’S a really good uh heads up and start for your project.
The second half that we’ve done is called through the wall and um. It’S a common problem by a lot of people around this world where uh imagine what’s behind the walls in this room right, it’s really hard to tell, and sometimes you need to drill stuff. You need to make some maintenance review some what’s behind and i can just walk in this room and using the building information modeling the beam information. I would be able to see all the cables, the hvac all the things that are in this building, to actually be able to do some work on it or send a work order to someone to repair something they would actually be able to come to that precise Location and do the repair of the maintenance that is being that needs to be done. So my background is in 3d laser scanning back in the 90s late 90s, we had designed a system that was about that big. That was able to capture 70 points per second, and we could display that on huge silicon graphics and you could turn about 40 000 points at the same time. That was just amazing.
Today’S technology enabled us to capture information at about at the rate of about a million points per second and go at distances that are way beyond everything we imagine, but even at that time, in the late 90s, we were dreaming of having a 3d scanner in every Home we knew there was a potential for that and microsoft did that with the microsoft kinect on the xbox. This is definitely a 3d scanner. I never dreamed at rent at that time that i would have a 3d scanner in my pocket right here. That is so exciting. It opens tons of new opportunities possibilities for the professional world, but also for the makers.
So these apps are concept apps and the project tango is not available to the public. They just announced that you will be able to submit a request to get one as a developer, it’s kind of what they did with the google glass program, where it’s still not available to the public, but so much potential to explore to see what can be done. That, i think, google that’s what google is trying to do: they’re opening it to the world to the developers to crazy peoples around the world and see what’s going to come up with that. So we don’t know if or when that’s going to be available.
But this think of it as a great concept car you go to the show and it’s demonstrating some of the amazing possibilities of what can happen, and this is a great baby to start working on it and dream all around the world and program on it. Kids, it’s so important that you learn how to program, because that gives you access to really fun things like that and there’s many more, not just from google but um. That’S that’s a key element of our future. I love that so google have been the first one to integrate that into a small device, but apple’s uh apple has actually acquired a company called prime sense that does 3d scanning devices small chips. So you can imagine that apple microsoft, who already has the technologies like kinect, will one day really some self-aware devices mobile device in the in the world. So that’s that is just the beginning. That is very exciting. .