On the 17th May 2017, at the
Google I/O keynote presentation Vice President of Virtual Reality for Google,
shared a number of new initiatives in virtual and augmented reality. This
included new services for the Tango platform called visual positioning service,
or VPS. The Tango team worked with the Google Maps team to develop the service,
which allows devices to triangulate location based on observed visual features.
It is obvious that AR is most
powerful when it's tightly coupled to the real world, and the more precisely,
the better. With VPS, Tango devices compare feature points against previously
observed points, allowing customers to find exact items in the store. In
addition, the potential to use VPS to map environments for visually-impaired
users seems to be great. Moreover, the app uses Tango's sensors to map a
classroom and place 3D visualizations within the space for students to explore.
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