Google has announced a new initiative called Project Tango. The ambitious project is courtesy of the Advanced Technology and Projects group, which was a part of Motorola that Google decided not to sell to Lenovo.

What Project Tango is attempting to do is give mobile devices a human-scale understanding of space and motion. Because while humans see, learn and live in a 3D world, our devices think “that physical world ends at the boundaries of the screen.” To accomplish this, the group has built a prototype Android smartphone with custom hardware and software. It will come equipped with  a motion tracker and depth sensor allowing it to detect and map its surroundings in 3D.

Google will be distributing the devices to interested professional developers with apps in navigation, mapping, augmented reality video games and even applications they haven’t thought of yet. The team adds that the project is in the very early stages. But with the help of Google, it’ll be exciting to see where Project Tango will take its technology next.

[via Project Tango]