Jan 12, 2017 08:30 AM EST By Erwin Castro, UniversityHerald Reporter

Remember Google Tango? Google's augmented reality platform project that was started development three years ago and first introduced in 2014. Google's primary goal was to equip a smartphone with some sort of computer vision abilities.

Google Tango is making a strong comeback and finally coming out in a consumer device. But this is not the launch of a new flagship product or technology.

For a quick start, Google Tango is an augmented reality computing platform, developed by Google and launched in 2014. The augmented reality platform enables apps to track a device's position and orientation within a detailed 3D environment. It uses computer vision to enable mobile devices to detect their position relative to the world around them without using GPS.

Google Tango Gets A Big Boost From An Art Museum

Google hasn't set Google Tango on fire at CES 2017 and it seems it's not interested in the augmented reality computing platform. Google Tango didn't get too much buzz and even a Google-led launch event or press release. The most the search giant could muster was a mere blog post about its possible applications.

But this doesn't mean that Google Tango would not get a shot at augmented reality. There's certainly a chance of life for Google Tango in the consumer space.

In a bid to get a second life for it's promising augmented reality platform Google Tango, Google is teaming up with a number of museums around the world, starting with the Detroit Institute of Arts.

According to TechCrunch, A Detroit art museum is currently leveraging Google Tango for an augmented reality history lesson. Google is currently offering museum visitors with Google Tango-enabled mobile devices that can be used to explore exhibits and artworks in augmented reality mode.

The Detroit Institute of Arts is betting hard on the Google-built augmented reality app as a way to create better engagements with its visitors, following in the footsteps of Barcelona's Museum Nacional d'Art de Catalunya.

At the Detroit museum, visitors can now request a Google-enabled Lenovo Phab 2 Pro from the front desk and use it to find out more about artifacts, Engadget reported.

The Google Tango-enabled device can peer inside sarcophagi to reveal mummified bodies, and even visualize lost architecture like the six-story Babylonian Ishtar Gate. It can also restore ancient limestone reliefs to their original setup.

Google first introduced Google Tango in January 2016, when it announced a partnership with Lenovo to release a consumer smartphone during the summer of 2016. That smartphone partnership will feature Google Tango technology marketed at consumers, noting a less than $500 price-point. At the same time, both Google and Lenovo announced an application incubator to get more application developers on board and get them developed more applications for the Google Tango-enabled device.

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