Project Tango Gives NASA a Boost (a short piece but very interesting)

July 9, 2014

Origin of Tango

Project Tango is a project currently underdevelopment by Google with the goal of "giving mobile devices a human scale understanding of space and motion" .These devices, once complete, will contain hardware and software capable of tracking the 3D motion of the device with creating a map of the environment around it. Pretty interesting right! The real question here is how could this be useful? Up till this point I has been thought the device would be useful for taking 3D measurements, mapping buildings for directions, helping the visually impaired to better navigate around different places and strapping it to Luke's head with an Oculus while he shoots at his friends in a 3D mapped environment. However recently NASA has formed an interest in this product and the technology used to develop it.

NASA's Use For Tango

NASA currently has three mini satellites in the ISS called SPHERES (Synchronized Position Hold, Engage, Reorient, Experimental Satellites) that are used to test formation flying in space. It is also hoped that the SPHERES' successor will be able to take over some of the basic task aboard the ISS. The main problem with these spacecraft upon initial testing was they could not efficiently operate without a human operator guiding them. Enter project tango. Since around 2010 one of NASA top labs, ARC (Ames Research Center). has been working to improve upon their little spacecrafts. Google reached out to NASA with Project Tango. NASA accepted and is now willing to put tango to the test. With technology like this NASA could create a small fleet of robots able to perform tasks outside the ISS with are time consuming and dangerous for the astronauts (personally I would take the danger if I could walk in space ). This technology would be priceless to future of unmanned missions and NASA itself.

Original Source: bit.ly/1tlkjsW