The interior of your friendly neighborhood Target store never looked anything like this.
The Roseville Target store Wednesday was crammed with gigantic red-and-white candy canes, a timid deer, a snowman at an igloo fire, an ice-skating bear who gets frozen in a huge chunk of ice, and (of course) Target's pooch mascot, Bullseye.
This whimsically animated winter wonderland, however, was visible only to those using a special tablet with augmented-reality properties. Those wielding the tablet could see this cartoon paradise layered on top of the usual aisles, shopping carts and registers.
Welcome to Project Tango, conjured up by Silicon Valley tech titan Google to make tablets and smartphones vastly better aware of their surroundings. A gadget with Tango technology can map its surroundings using cameras and other sensing hardware.
This can lead to crazy stuff -- including Target's augmented-reality Bullseye's Playground.
The project, a close collaboration with Google, is part of the tech company's attempts to push the boundaries of interactive marketing. Google has also recently collaborated with Burberry, EA Sports, Lionsgate, Nike and Volkswagen as part of that Art, Copy & Code initiative.
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Target and Google also recently cooked up a set of basic Bullseye's Playground games for smartphone users, but the Project Tango demo is the most cutting-edge part of this digital-marketing collaboration.
Devices that incorporate the Project Tango environment-sensing technology are not yet widely available, though tablets reportedly are being released in limited quantities for just over $1,000.
Google has mostly been sending test units to hardware and software developers. Tango recipients include the University of Minnesota's MARS Lab. MARS is short for Multiple Autonomous Robotic Systems. 
That lab, headed by veteran computer-science and engineering professor Stergios Roumeliotis, has worked closely with Google on Project Tango since its inception. Two former laboratory researchers now work at Google and have made key Project Tango contributions, Roumeliotis said.
Project Tango aspires "to give devices a human-scale understanding of the world," said Google's Vikram Tank, marketing manager for Art, Copy & Code.
"As humans, we know when things in space are present," Tank noted. "I know where the aisle is in a store; but for a device to know that is really hard. We use different sensors in the device to map the environment around you and give the device an understanding of where it is in space."
Project Tango is now part of an effort with Target to "explore how we can use creativity and technology to build brands," Tank added. Because Target shoppers are known to be obsessive users of mobile devices, "we really feel mobile can be a big ally to retailers in a store."
This can be highly informational and practical, such as feeding shoppers prices or specs as they scrutinizing products, or this can be "something very entertainment-driven, like what we are doing" with Bullseye's Playground, he noted.
Visitors to at the Roseville Target on Thursday will get a taste of the technology via a guided tour ending in an snowball fight with a blue cartoon version of the Zoomer Dino toy. The Tango tablet will be publicly available from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., Thursday through Sunday.
In a future when Tango technology or similar is widespread in consumer smartphones and tablets, all kinds of possibilities open up, Tank said.
"You can think about a blind person navigating a space," Tank said. "The sky's the limit. That is why there are (Project Tango) kits out there for developers who are interested in exploring 3D mapping and 3D space."
Few have made better use of the technology than the University of Minnesota, which has a great deal to do with how Target's augmented-reality project works.
The MARS Lab is responsible for the navigation algorithms that let the Tango tablet know where it is in relation to its surroundings. That's how the tablet knows when to shift the Bullseye's Playground panoramas on the screen in relation to how the tablet is physically moving inside the store, lab leader Roumeliotis said.


he said. Current laboratory members continue to work closely with Google on Tango, as well.
Project Tango technology has enormous potential beyond augmented-reality games, Roumeliotis noted. It could be the key to providing indoor mapping and navigation comparable to Global Positioning System mapping and navigation outdoors. GPS is notorious for not working properly in enclosed spaces.
Those entering the Mall of America with a mobile device incorporating Tango-like technology could easily find their way around, Roumeliotis said.
Essentially it lets you "see the blue dot inside the building," he said.


The MARS Lab is responsible for the navigation algorithms that let the Tango tablet know where it is in relation to its surroundings


Former lab members Joel Hesch and Esha Nerurkar, experts on those algorithms, are now key members of the Project Tango team at Google,


It could be the key to providing indoor mapping and navigation comparable to Global Positioning System mapping and navigation outdoors. GPS is notorious for not working properly in enclosed spaces.



Algos are the key.  Indoor location will be the most complex commonly used algos.  The approaches  
will be hybrid mix of sensor fusion.  The SLAM part ( simutaneous location AND mapping) will be pretty cool.  Compute intense 10 axis.  Interfaces with other things.  
QUIK has been hard at work on Indoor location for some time now.  It will help them to have good building blocks- the best in class pedometer can be a nice solid starting point for the sensor part of Indoor location....QUIK has it in them to make one of the TOP solutions and they will be willing to work late if needed ( like they did on the S1 ) to get it done.

When to expect it?

Sometime this yr and who are we working with for the SLAM, the beacons, or WiFi?