The multibillion-dollar company revealed three of its most zany projects on the final day of its annual developers’ conference in Silicon Valley yesterday, and demonstrated real-world prototypes of technology you’d think was ripped from the pages of a science fiction novel.
More: This Country Is the Most Technologically Advanced in the World
All three creations are the work of Google’s ATAP lab, which stands for Advanced Technologies and Products, and senior vice-president Dan Kaufman said creating the technology was “hard because there’s no precedents for what we do”.
“There’s just nothing out there like (this) so we have to invent things,” he said.
Google’s build-it-yourself modular phone received the biggest cheers from developers, after engineering lead Rafa Camargo revealed the company would sell the phone next year.
Mr Camargo showed off a working prototype of the phone that is made of a baseplate with a screen on one side and six places for building blocks on the back. Users will be able to slide in everything from new cameras to speakers and extra storage into the slots.
“How do you add functionality to your Ara? Step one: plug in a module. Step two: use it,” he said, while slipping a new camera block into the phone and holding it up to take a photograph.
“It’s that simple. No rebooting your device.”
Mr Camargo also ejected the camera block just by asking the phone to do so.
ATAP creative master Blaise Bertrand said in addition to standard phone features, Google would create innovative and health-focused additions with companies including Samsung, Panasonic, and Sony.
They had already produced a blood sugar-testing addition for diabetics, he said, that could eliminate the need to carry a testing kit.
“It turns out that pretty much everything in a glucometer is also in a phone so we thought, hey, what if we could put all this into a module?” Mr Bertrand said.
Also due in stores next year is Google’s first piece of internet-connected clothing: a Levi’s denim jacket with electronic sensors woven into its fabric.
The “interactive fibres” are hidden in 16 rows of subtle stitching on the Commute Trucker Jacket’s sleeve, and are powered by a small tag buttoned to its cuff.
Users connect the jacket to a smartphone using Bluetooth and can wave their hand over the tag to dismiss phone calls, run a finger over the sensors to control music volume, or tap it to hear an estimated time of arrival when using maps.
Levi’s innovation vice-president Paul Dillinger said the jacket was designed for cyclists but, other than recharging its tag in a computer’s USB port, it would not require special treatment.
“You don’t have to hang it up, just drop it on the floor,” he said.
“If you get this thing dirty, you put it in the washing machine. This is friendly, easy technology. This is technology you can wash.”
Google program lead Dr Ivan Poupyrev said the jacket would be just one of many hi-tech garments created under Project Jacquard, and would launch in stores next autumn, with a test version released this spring.
Dr Poupyrev also showed off a way for people to control gadgets simply by twiddling their fingers in the air.
Project Soli uses a radar that Google has shrunk and built into devices as small as an LG smartwatch and a speaker from JBL Harman.
You can make a scrolling gesture in front of the smartwatch change apps and check your text messages without touching the screen, or turn a speaker off simply by shaking your hand in front of it.
Developers working with Google had already worked out ways to use the technology in other scenarios such as cars — letting drivers answer phone calls by making a two-finger phone gesture with their hands — and by making midair patterns to unlock phones.
Dr Poupyrev said Google would launch a beta version of the device for developers next year.
