What if you could capture the dimensions of your home simply by walking around with your phone before you went furniture shopping? What if directions to a new location didn’t stop at the street address? What if you never again found yourself lost in a new building? What if the visually-impaired could navigate unassisted in unfamiliar indoor places? What if you could search for a product and see where the exact shelf is located in a super-store?

Whether or not the project comes to fruition, it has certainly made some technological strides. One example is the partnership with Movidius, a vision chip manufacturer that processes data captured by Project Tango phones and tablets. In an effort to minimize power consumption, they have moved to a more energy-efficient model and intend to market the technology regardless of whether Google’s project takes flight or not. As CEO Remi El-Ouazzane said, "The next disruption in mobile will be about incorporating vision applications into connected devices, bringing them closer to the complexity and sophistication of human vision...our customers can now create proprietary ultra-low power, captivating vision experiences that drive demand for existing products and accelerate completely new product categories."