A new startup is hoping to utilise Google's new Project Tango device to help speed up getting quotes from tradesmen quoting to fix up your home.

Google's Project Tango is an Android-based smartphone prototype and developer kit that comes with advanced 3D sensors that allow the prototype to "make over a quarter million 3D measurements every second".

With the ability to track motion and scan in 3D, Google is hoping Project Tango will spearhead indoor navigation, immersive gaming, augmented reality, etc.

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Smart Picture Technologies is one of a number of hand-picked developers who are already working with the new Project Tango device.

Although the company has already engineered a version of its software to work on a regular smartphone or tablet, it is hoping to use Google's Project Tango system to catapult the technology even further.

It is working on releasing a series of apps that use the technology in the next 3-4 months for the iPhone and Android platforms.

One of those apps will be a DIY app that will allow people to take a picture of anything and then extrapolate accurate measurement data from the picture.

"The idea is that you scan your room and then send it to a builder for a quote," explains Kari Myllykoski, the founder of the company, to Pocket-lint when we visited the company in Austin, Texas. "He can then take exact measurements from the 3D scan and then built it from there. It should save time and money."

Users can use the app to capture Smart Picture images which are 2D or high definition 3D models that contain millions of measurement data points. Users can edit and share Smart Pictures directly from the company's mobile application or cloud service.

"Whether at home or work, capturing vital scale and dimension info with the snap of a picture increases productivity, saves substantial time and reduces human error in virtually any industry where measurement capture is important," adds the founder.

Myllykoski also believes that insurance companies could use it to take pictures of crashes to ascertain the damage caused. The images taken with the technology are a single picture rather than an insurance investigator having to snap and then stitch multiple shots together.

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Pocket-lint

The company is already talking to a number of different company's in the vehicle repair industry, vehicle and property insurance, home improvement, and many more.

As for the Project Tango connection, Myllykoski says that they've hardly had to do much to take benefit of the new tech: "Only five per cent of the code of the app needed to be changed," says Myllykoski.

Other potential Project Tango applications include being able to capture the dimensions of your home by walking around with your phone, playing hide-and-seek in your house with a game character, transforming your hallways into a tree-lined path, competing against friends for control over territories in your home, or hiding virtual treasures in physical places, according to Google.