Reference design announced for Google’s Project Tango

The reference design module contains two cameras arranged in a stereoscopic setting, a fish-eye camera for 2D wide-angle imaging and an inertial motion unit. Thus, Inuitive offers a complete solution that covers both real time depth sensing and smart sensor hub functionalities, to calculate localisation and mapping information.

Google recently released a Project Tango Tablet Development Kit, in the form of a seven-inch tablet. This platform is mostly aimed at developers, to allow developing applications for Tango systems.

“We are excited to be part of the Project Tango ecosystem. Our unique technology and architecture serve the Project Tango concept is many aspects: starting from real time depth generation, going all the way to efficiently executing mapping, localisation, navigation and demanding signal processing algorithms.” said Shlomo Gadot, CEO and Co-Founder, Inuitive. “This collaboration with Google allows Inuitive to pursue the mobile market from a unique position, as Tango enabling technology providers. We will help realise Tango concept into a consumer market technology.”

NU3000 is a multi-core processor, optimised for depth sensing, 3D image processing and computer vision in mobile environments. It can interface and manage three cameras: two as a stereo depth source and one as an RGB sensor. Moreover, it can process all three video streams in real time, to generate a high quality depth image from the stereo, assign colour to the depth images and execute high-level processing on all available video streams. NU3000 architecture is combining dedicated hardware accelerators with vector DSPs to allow a power efficient execution of depth sensing as well as higher-level algorithms and applications.

NU3000 can manage, synchronise and time stamp various sensors. It can also execute real-time simultaneous localisation and mapping algorithms. Accordingly, in a Project Tango environment, NU3000 can serves as the core depth generating engine, together with a smart sensor hub and serve as the primary processor of the mapping and localisation algorithms.