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TIMOTHY JORDAN: Hi.
I'm Timothy Jordan, and I'm here at Google SF for a Tango
workshop.
And with me is Eitan.
Eitan, how are you doing?
EITAN MARDER-EPPSTEIN: I'm doing great, Timothy.
Thanks for having me here.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: It's always a pleasure to have you.
For those of you that have seen Eitan on our show before,
you know that he's a senior software engineer on Tango.
EITAN MARDER-EPPSTEIN: Yep.
I've been working on Tango for some time,
trying to help mobile devices see and understand
the world around them.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: God, it's such a cool technology.
EITAN MARDER-EPPSTEIN: Yeah, we're really excited about it.
I know we've talked about it in the past,
but use cases like shopping for furniture at home
or using your device as a tape measure,
or even getting from point A to B in a mall or in a museum
and using your device for indoor navigation.
It's really exciting.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: Yeah, and we've talked about those.
We've even shown some screen capture of those use cases.
I love games on Tango, and the whole
being able to measure things is so simple and useful.
And at this workshop you're going beyond those use cases
and exploring photo and video and visual communication
with Tango.
Can tell me a little bit about that?
EITAN MARDER-EPPSTEIN: Yeah.
So at this workshop, we're really
looking to expand the capabilities of a camera,
and what people think of when they
think of their camera on a mobile phone.
And we're doing this kind of in three major ways.
So the first one is in video, doing things
like video stabilization and rolling shutter compensation.
The second thrust we're pushing on at this workshop
is around filters for imagery, so
being able to combine depth information with the RGB camera
to get really interesting effects,
sort of stylize your photos.
And the third thrust is really around storytelling, and just
tying the camera to the space that it's in,
and enabling new experiences and new stories
to unfold in front of you in your actual environment.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: God, that's so cool.
Well, I'll tell you what, why don't we
actually just look at some of these use cases
and talk to some developers?
EITAN MARDER-EPPSTEIN: Yeah, absolutely.
We should do it.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: Great.
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I'm now sitting here with Chris and Ana
from the Wall Street Journal, who
are doing really cool stuff with Tango at this workshop today.
How are you two doing?
CHRISTOPHER CHESTNUT: Doing great.
Loving it.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: Tell me what it is that you're working on.
CHRISTOPHER CHESTNUT: Working on a new angle of photojournalism.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: Tell me about that.
What does that look like?
ANA BECKER: We want to create an app that lets photographers,
as they're taking a photo, sort of place
in 3D space exactly where they are and exactly
the viewpoint that they're shooting through, I guess.
On the users' side, as they're sort
of navigating their day-to-day world, footsteps that appear in
places where photographs have been taken with this app.
It's capability-enabled, so you can hold your phone up and sort
of line up seamlessly into your environment
where this photograph was taken.
So utilizing Tango's fine scale location information and area
mapping as a tool to give people a new lens to view their world.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: That's really exciting.
I think it's really interesting the ability
to explore space in new ways because of technology
like this.
And the demo that you guys are working on
is a really cool example of that.
I think what I hear from you is that there's
this gap between the photographer
as the creator of the work and the user
who's viewing this work.
And you're trying to bring them more together.
ANA BECKER: Yeah.
I think that's a really good way of putting it,
of sort of stepping literally into the shoes
of another person at another time.
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TIMOTHY JORDAN: I'm now sitting here with Andy and Eddie
from Mirada, who are also at this Tango workshop today.
Tell me what you're working on.
EDDIE OFFERMANN: I sort of took a left turn
from what I normally am doing.
I decided to sort of approach it from the perspective of gaming,
and scanning an area and building an environment
based on what's actually there.
And so my idea with this was what
if you could just sort of build the structure of your landscape
with LEGOs or building blocks or cardboard or whatever
and then, using Tango, scan that and creates your terrain.
It's basically taking the mesh data
that we get from Tango that's great for doing stuff
like just determining the locations of things
and measurements of things, or bouncing physics off
of it, but then taking that data and using it to construct
something that's actually texturable and looks
like a nice landscape.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: What about yourself?
ANDY COCHRANE: So it's an app that
takes the depth data from Tango and then creates
digital art out of it.
Taking that and using the depth data only from the Tango
to allow you to create digital art really quickly and easily.
So it's just really, really fun, really easy
way of taking the depth data and making something really cool
out of it and then sharing it.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: So what do you think about building for Tango
so far?
EDDIE OFFERMANN: We've done a lot of stuff
for some other platforms, and I think
we probably agree that the functionality is a lot more--
ANDY COCHRANE: It actually works.
EDDIE OFFERMANN: It's a lot-- yeah.
It's a lot more mature.
So it's pretty easy to develop for.
I can kind of rely on it to provide
the essential information, and then
I just have to figure out what I want
to do with that information on top of it.
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TIMOTHY JORDAN: OK, Sam, so tell me
what you're working on today.
Sam Maliszewski: I'm working on a video stabilization app using Tango.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: So walk me through the user experience.
Sam Maliszewski: Yeah.
I mean, I really wanted it to be as simple as possible,
where you open it up, for a second you kind of still
see the camera shaking, and occasionally-- I'm
still-- I'm adding some new features,
so it's a little bit buggy and gets some weird distortions,
but after about a second, it'll stabilize.
And then it'll just be a smooth image on your thing.
And you basically move the camera like you would--
it's sort of like having a virtual gimbal, in a way,
where it's-- it'll--
TIMOTHY JORDAN: Like one of those things that you
attach that makes it smooth.
Sam Maliszewski: Mhm.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: Uh-huh.
Sam Maliszewski: Yeah.
It's kind of just a very little imaginary Steadicam
inside your tablet, in a way, where
it's just you kind of guide it where you want to go.
And ideally, it will follow.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: That's awesome.
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I'm now sitting here with Yuliya and Brian of the New York
Times.
Hello.
BRIAN PLUMMER: Hello.
YULIYA PARSHINA-KOTTAS: Hello.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: So you've been playing with Tango.
What do you think?
BRIAN PLUMMER: We're really excited,
and there's a lot of cool possibilities.
And we are in the situation where we have lots of data
and we're trying to figure out how we can leverage
AR to showcase this data and drive user engagement,
and also, I guess, surfacing our content
so people can discover things.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: And what are some of the things
that users could potentially see with Tango and New York Times?
YULIYA PARSHINA-KOTTAS: The one exciting thing
is maybe utilizing some of the 3D models and the 3D data
that we'd been building.
So imagine seeing that on your table top, or all around you.
Visualizing some scenes from the news headlines that
have happened, so going beyond even the 2D headlines
and jumping into the 3D world around you.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: What do you think about the Tango
development process so far?
YULIYA PARSHINA-KOTTAS: I'm actually coming at it
from a different direction.
I am a 3D artist and not that much of a developer.
So for me, it's been an amazing experience.
I've jumped into the Unity side of it,
and even being able to crawl through-- with baby steps
through getting the basic tutorials
and actually building stuff has been really great.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: That's awesome.
YULIYA PARSHINA-KOTTAS: So it seems
to be a friendly platform for even beginners.
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TIMOTHY JORDAN: Those are some really cool demos that we just
saw, Eitan.
I can't wait to get those on a Tango
phone, which begs the question, when can I get a Tango phone?
EITAN MARDER-EPPSTEIN: Yeah, so we're super excited.
We're really close to launch.
The first Tango phones are going to go out this fall.
They'll be made by Lenovo with a partnership with us.
They're called Phab 2 Pros, and you can look for them
on store shelves this fall.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: That's awesome.
And in preparation for that launch,
you guys have done a bunch of SDK updates, as well.
EITAN MARDER-EPPSTEIN: Yeah.
So in preparation for launch, we've
been working hard on the SDK, both performance improvements
and some new features.
If you're interested in learning more about it,
you should definitely check out our developer sites.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: Awesome.
Developers.google.com/tango?
EITAN MARDER-EPPSTEIN: You got it.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: And we'll put the link below.
I'm Timothy.
This is Eitan.
EITAN MARDER-EPPSTEIN: Bye, guys.
Thanks.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: See you next time.
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