The Latest Use Of Google’s Project Tango? Innovating Graffiti

Finally, technology comes through with something for the wanna-be street artist.

BY MARK WILSON1 MINUTE READ

You may not know or care about Project Tango, Google’s depth-sensing camera system, which can map augmented reality visuals onto the real world. You may not care about the Lenovo Phab 2 Pro smartphone, which is the first consumer smartphone to have Tango baked right in, either. 

But here’s a dude spray painting a perfect, giant cartoon bunny on a real-life wall, thanks to Project Tango running an app called SketchAR on a Phab 2 Pro.

So can average smartphone owners use this tech yet? Co.Design actually tested the iOS version of SketchAR last month–which, of course, doesn’t use Google’s Tango technology, since it runs on an iPhone. The two of us who tried it couldn’t actually get the app working well enough to draw a single sketch.

In other words, enjoy this tease of the endless possibilities* of things to come, but don’t quit your day job yet.

*When I visited R/GA a few months ago, someone had used similar augmented reality technology to draw Bart Simpson mooning the room on a whiteboard. So the future is pretty damn bright.