Posted by Larry Yang, Senior Product Manager, Project Tango
Ever been lost indoors? Us too. All the time. We brought Project Tango to Mobile World Congress, and instead of just talking about augmented reality and indoor navigation, we let attendees experience these technologies for themselves... in a museum.
Most of us love museums, but they can be difficult to navigate. It can be hard to find the location of a painting, the story of the sculpture—and equally hard to tell your friends where you are. With Project Tango, the way we experience museums can completely change by making it easier to find what (and who) you’re seeking as well as showing you the story behind the art.
To demonstrate this, we invited conference attendees into the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya, carrying Project Tango developer kits loaded with GuidiGO, a museum tour app, and Glympse, a location-sharing app.
With GuidiGO, attendees could view the museum’s floor plan and follow blue dots on their screens to navigate to specific pieces of art — all without relying on Wi-Fi, GPS or beacons. They could also learn more about the art by simply holding the tablet up to each work and tapping virtual tags to reveal additional information. If people lost track of their friends during their visit, they could easily share their indoor location with their friends with the Glympse app.
We loved seeing these creative applications of Project Tango and can’t wait for people to get their hands on them with the launch of Lenovo’s consumer-ready Project Tango smartphone this summer. To make your own Project Tango app, take a look at our developer documentation and stay tuned for more Project Tango news and applications.