Lenovo Is Making the First Google Project Tango Phone | Hacker News Reader

Lenovo Is Making the First Google Project Tango Phone

techcrunch.com

75 pointsksashikumar34 comments

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Everytime I read lenovo my mind automatically translates it to superfish.

And then you add Google on top of this and you have a phone with open ears and eyes.

Wait, I thought Lenovo was automatically translated to 'Lizard People'?

That is before the MITM attack

The biggest use case for depth sensors on a phone are Augmented Reality applications.

We have been playing with a Tango for a while, but quite frankly I was disappointed with it's tracking capability compared to what we can achieve with a standard RGB phone camera within our own application.

We think we are at the point that we can do 3D reconstruction and ranging as well, and as quickly, with commodity RGB hardware and vSLAM, as you can get from depth cameras in 95% of the environments.

No, the biggest use case for depth sensors on a phone is a 3D scanning.

You'll be able to scan your Xbox or coffee table, it will identify it, and then you can do anything with that reference:

- List it on Craigslist (with detailed specs)

- Review it on Amazon

- Download the User's Manual

- Browse related accessories

- Request support

- Etc.

and you'll then be able to sell it on Craigslist or eBay in one click (including a relatively complete description with specs).

Think of it as an alternative to barcodes or RFIDs for things with unique and solid shapes.

Disagree first, because we can do that without depth sensors, so no it isn't necessary. You can already scan objects with 123D Catch from Autodesk. We can do dense RGB pointclouds from an iPhone from as little as 14 images:

http://staging.pair3d.com/pointcloud/couch.html

Also disagree slightly with your use case. For the amount of work it takes to get a quality 3D scan of something, even with a good IR depth system the benefit isn't there for the user.

Besides, the ecosystem you describe relies much more on a robust segmentation system with very well trained data set. You can do that easier and better with a single or multiple pictures than you can with a 3D scan.

You can do it on Windows with the built in 3D scanner app with either a kinect or a webcam this works pretty damn well... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQPTxiK-Crw

The 3D builder app is one of coolest things that came out of MSFT for a while not sure why it hasn't gotten more attention it pretty much deserves it. You can get an almost professional level 3D scanning for under 200$ and if you only are scanning simple objects then a webcam and a basic turn table will work quite well also.

So sad this was the use case thought of.

Forget about scanning something to sell it. Think about scanning something and sending it off with an app to be printed and shipped to you.

So how many phone projects does Google have now? Nexus, Silver, Ara, and now Tango?

Should one count Fi as part of a Phone Project?

Silver is dead.

For anyone who was wondering what Silver was: http://www.theverge.com/2014/9/16/6248561/google-android-sil...

"The oft-rumored Android Silver program was supposed to showcase the best smartphones running Android as Google intended it."

At this point, I don't believe I would pick up another google service because sooner or later they're going to close it down.

Should I expect any gratuit spyware with it too?

It's a Google project so yes, I guess you should.

If so, it'll likely be much harder to detect as Lenovo could just have Google's CA sign their cert instead of creating their own (untrusted) CA.

Which is a reminder to us all that the Certificate "Authority" system is broken..

..by design

If that had been the issue, they could have gotten the superfish certificate signed by anyone. You don't exactly need an inside man to get an SSL cert these days.

Definitively.

Tango is pretty cool, but is supposed to be the consumer application of this tech ?

Hard to say what people may come up with.

the original Tango demo showed things like measuring distance between two points in free space simply by point the camera at each in turn, or taking a look at a life sized car by walking around it.

Potentially you could have an app that allowed you to see how a sofa would fit in a room before you buy it.

We are talking about a device that fits in your pocket and can be away of where it is in relation to everything else in a room.

I think it is one of those things that needs to be out there for a while for people to play with before we can say if it has any potential or not.

Don't know what is the intended application, but one possible use is industrial object recognition and localization - add a robot arm and you can start making a pick-and-place machine.

inside-out positional tracking for VR headsets, i.e. no external tracker, completely untethered. The current Samsung GearVR and all of the Google Cardboard setups can only do orientation. The accelerometer data isn't accurate enough to integrate to a position (several people, including myself, have tried).

Kind of what I was thinking. Even the guys working on it in the video couldn't come up with much beyond "help assist blind people by sensing the environment" and "testing out furniture placement in your apartment"..."The possibilities are endless!".

That said, it's hard to discount the potential impact of new tech before it's been in the wild for a few years at least. There could be some wacky mad scientist developer who comes out of nowhere and finds some novel use for it.

So theoretically a Tango phone should be capable of AR simply by looking at stuff through it (no dedicated AR browser and the like)?

It's somewhat experimental. Developers that buy the Tango Dev kit and invest the time to learn it and build something share a significant part of the cost/risk.

Is there any guarantee from Google+Lenovo that this will actually be released to end consumers?

What about Project Ara? When is it coming to fruition?

They were set to do a limited launch in Puerto Rico in late 2015, but they've delayed to 2016, possibly in other markets.

software spyware and hardware spyware champs team up!

spyware phone. super bad choice from google

My guess is that this is the Motorola Mobility division that Lenovo recently purchased as opposed to Lenovo proper.

Yup you are probably correct. I just have a hard time now because I associate lenovo with spyware. Ah well.

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