What is Project Tango?

Google wants your mobile devices to see the world like your eyes do — in 3D, with an understanding of space and motion and an awareness of the world surrounding them. Project Tango, a combination of hardware and software technologies, is designed to do just that.

In development at Google's Advanced Technology and Projects (ATAP) group in collaboration with academic institutions like The George Washington University, research labs and companies like Nvidia, the technology takes millions of measurements per second to create a 3D picture of the world around Android devices.

Developer Limbic Software's Zombie Gunship Reality is the first game designed to take advantage of Project Tango. The game takes Limbic's first-person shooter Zombie Gunship and, adding a Project Tango device's familiarity with the environment surrounding it, turns the device into a virtual AC-130 gunship that players control by moving in the real world.

Google's Project Tango page proposes many other scenarios possible because of the technology.

"Imagine playing hide-and-seek in your house with your favorite game character, or transforming the hallways into a tree-lined path," project lead Johnny Lee wrote on the site. "Imagine competing against a friend for control over territories in your home with your own miniature army, or hiding secret virtual treasures in physical places around the world."

A Project Tango Development Kit will be available later this year for $1,024. The developer-focused 7-inch tablet will include 4 GB of RAM, 128 GB of storage, a motion tracking camera and depth sensing capabilities.

Press play below to see Google's introduction to Project Tango. You can learn more about Google's recent announcements, including a new graphics-focused technology, watches, and the Android TV, in Polygon's Google I/O 2014 StoryStream.