Category Archives: Google Developers Blog

News and insights on Google platforms, tools and events

Google Nest Device Access Console now available for partners and individuals

Posted by Gabriel Rubinsky, Senior Product Manager

Today, we’re excited to announce the Device Access Console is available.

The Device Access program lets individuals and qualified partners securely access and control Nest products with their apps and solutions.

At the heart of the Device Access program is the Smart Device Management API. Since we announced the program, Alarm.com, Control4, DISH, OhmConnect, NRG Energy, and Vivint Smart Home have successfully completed the Early Access Program (EAP) with Nest thermostat, camera, or doorbell traits. In the coming months, we expect additional devices to be supported and more smart home partners to launch their new integrations as well.

Enhanced privacy and security

The Device Access program is built on a foundation of privacy and security. The program requires partner submission of qualified use cases and completion of a security assessment before being allowed to utilize the Smart Device Management API for commercial use. The program process gives our users the confidence that commercial partners offering integrated Nest solutions have data protections and safeguards in place that meet our privacy and security standards.

Nest device access and control

The Device Access program currently allows qualified partners to integrate directly with Nest devices, enable control of thermostats, access and view camera feeds, and receive doorbell notifications with images. All qualified partner solutions and services will require end-user consent before being able to access, control, and manage Nest devices as part of their service offerings, either through a partner client app or service platform. Ultimately, this gives users more choice in how to control their home and their own generated data.

If you’re a developer or a Nest user interested in the Device Access program or access to the sandbox development environment,* you can find more information on our Device Access site.

  • Device Access for Commercial Developers

    The Device Access program allows trusted partners to offer access, management, and control of Nest devices within the partner’s app, solution, and ecosystem. It allows developers to test all API traits in the sandbox environment, before moving forward with commercial integration. Learn more

  • Device Access for Individuals

    For individual smart home developer enthusiasts, you can register to access the sandbox development environment, allowing you to directly control your own Nest devices through your private integrations and automations. Learn more

We’re doing the work to make Nest devices more secure and protect user privacy long into the future. This means expanding privacy and data security programs, and delivering flexibility for our customers to use thousands of products from partners to create a connected, helpful home.



* Registration consists of the acceptance of the Google API and Nest Device Access Sandbox Terms of Service, along with a one-time, non-refundable nominal fee per account

Google Nest Device Access Console now available for partners and individuals

Posted by Gabriel Rubinsky, Senior Product Manager

Today, we’re excited to announce the Device Access Console is available.

The Device Access program lets individuals and qualified partners securely access and control Nest products with their apps and solutions.

At the heart of the Device Access program is the Smart Device Management API. Since we announced the program, Alarm.com, Control4, DISH, OhmConnect, NRG Energy, and Vivint Smart Home have successfully completed the Early Access Program (EAP) with Nest thermostat, camera, or doorbell traits. In the coming months, we expect additional devices to be supported and more smart home partners to launch their new integrations as well.

Enhanced privacy and security

The Device Access program is built on a foundation of privacy and security. The program requires partner submission of qualified use cases and completion of a security assessment before being allowed to utilize the Smart Device Management API for commercial use. The program process gives our users the confidence that commercial partners offering integrated Nest solutions have data protections and safeguards in place that meet our privacy and security standards.

Nest device access and control

The Device Access program currently allows qualified partners to integrate directly with Nest devices, enable control of thermostats, access and view camera feeds, and receive doorbell notifications with images. All qualified partner solutions and services will require end-user consent before being able to access, control, and manage Nest devices as part of their service offerings, either through a partner client app or service platform. Ultimately, this gives users more choice in how to control their home and their own generated data.

If you’re a developer or a Nest user interested in the Device Access program or access to the sandbox development environment,* you can find more information on our Device Access site.

  • Device Access for Commercial Developers

    The Device Access program allows trusted partners to offer access, management, and control of Nest devices within the partner’s app, solution, and ecosystem. It allows developers to test all API traits in the sandbox environment, before moving forward with commercial integration. Learn more

  • Device Access for Individuals

    For individual smart home developer enthusiasts, you can register to access the sandbox development environment, allowing you to directly control your own Nest devices through your private integrations and automations. Learn more

We’re doing the work to make Nest devices more secure and protect user privacy long into the future. This means expanding privacy and data security programs, and delivering flexibility for our customers to use thousands of products from partners to create a connected, helpful home.



* Registration consists of the acceptance of the Google API and Nest Device Access Sandbox Terms of Service, along with a one-time, non-refundable nominal fee per account

Google Pay picks Flutter to drive its global product development

Posted by David Ko, Engineering Director; Jeff Lim, Software Engineer; Pankaj Gupta, Director of Engineering; Will Horn, Software Engineer

Three years ago, when we launched Google Pay India (then called Tez), our vision was to create a simple and secure payment app for everyone in India. We started with the premise of making payments simple and built a user interface that made making payments as easy as starting a conversation. The simplicity of the design resonated with users instantly and over time, we have added functionality to help users do more than just make payments. Today users can pay their bills, recharge their phones, get loans instantly through banks, buy train tickets and much more all within the app. Last year, we also launched the Spot Platform in India, which allows merchants to create branded experiences within the Google Pay app so they can connect with their customers in a more engaging way.

As we looked at scaling our learnings from India to other parts of the world, we wanted to focus on a fast and efficient development environment, which was modern and engaging with the flexibility needed to keep the UI clean. And more importantly one that enabled us to write once and be able to deploy to both iOS and Android reaching the wide variety of users.

It was clear that we would need to build it, and ensure that it worked across a wide variety of payment rails, infrastructure, and operating systems. But with the momentum we had for Google Pay in India, and the fast evolving product features - we had limited engineering resources to put behind this effort.

After evaluating various options, it was easy to pick Flutter as the obvious choice. The three things that made it click for us were:

  • We could write once in Dart and deploy on both iOS and Android, which led to a uniform best-in-class experience on both Android and iOS;
  • Just-in-Time compiler with hot reload during development enabled rapid iteration on UI which tremendously increased developer efficiency; and
  • Ahead-of-time compilation ensured high performance deployment.

Now the task was to get it done. We started with a small team of three software engineers from both Android and iOS. Those days were focused and intense. To start with we created a vertical slice of the app — home page, chat, and payments (with the critical native plugins for payments in India). The team first tried a hybrid approach, and then decided to do a clean rewrite as it was not scalable.

We ran a few small sprints for other engineers on the team to give them an opportunity to rewrite something in Flutter and provide feedback. Everyone loved Flutter — you could see the thrill on people’s faces as they talked about how fast it was to build a user interface. One of the most exciting things was that the team could get instant feedback while developing. We could also leverage the high quality widgets that Flutter provided to make development easier.

After carefully weighing the risks and our case for migration, we decided to go all in with Flutter. It was a monumental rewrite of a moving target, and the existing app continues to evolve while we were rewriting features. After many months of hard work, Google Pay Flutter implementation is now available in open beta in India and Singapore. Our users in India and Singapore can visit the Google Play Store page for Google Pay to opt into the beta program and experience the latest app built on Flutter. Next, we are looking forward to launching Google Pay on Flutter to everyone across the world on iOS and Android.

Google Pay image Google Pay image Google pay image Google Pay image

We hope this gives you a fair idea of how to approach and launch a complete rewrite of an active app that is used by millions of users and businesses of all sizes. It would not have been possible for us to deliver this without Flutter’s continued advances on the platform. Huge thanks to the Flutter team, as today, we are standing on their shoulders!

When fully migrated, Google Pay will be one of the largest production deployments on the Flutter platform. We look forward to sharing more learnings from our transition to Flutter in the future.

Google Pay picks Flutter to drive its global product development

Posted by David Ko, Engineering Director; Jeff Lim, Software Engineer; Pankaj Gupta, Director of Engineering; Will Horn, Software Engineer

Three years ago, when we launched Google Pay India (then called Tez), our vision was to create a simple and secure payment app for everyone in India. We started with the premise of making payments simple and built a user interface that made making payments as easy as starting a conversation. The simplicity of the design resonated with users instantly and over time, we have added functionality to help users do more than just make payments. Today users can pay their bills, recharge their phones, get loans instantly through banks, buy train tickets and much more all within the app. Last year, we also launched the Spot Platform in India, which allows merchants to create branded experiences within the Google Pay app so they can connect with their customers in a more engaging way.

As we looked at scaling our learnings from India to other parts of the world, we wanted to focus on a fast and efficient development environment, which was modern and engaging with the flexibility needed to keep the UI clean. And more importantly one that enabled us to write once and be able to deploy to both iOS and Android reaching the wide variety of users.

It was clear that we would need to build it, and ensure that it worked across a wide variety of payment rails, infrastructure, and operating systems. But with the momentum we had for Google Pay in India, and the fast evolving product features - we had limited engineering resources to put behind this effort.

After evaluating various options, it was easy to pick Flutter as the obvious choice. The three things that made it click for us were:

  • We could write once in Dart and deploy on both iOS and Android, which led to a uniform best-in-class experience on both Android and iOS;
  • Just-in-Time compiler with hot reload during development enabled rapid iteration on UI which tremendously increased developer efficiency; and
  • Ahead-of-time compilation ensured high performance deployment.

Now the task was to get it done. We started with a small team of three software engineers from both Android and iOS. Those days were focused and intense. To start with we created a vertical slice of the app — home page, chat, and payments (with the critical native plugins for payments in India). The team first tried a hybrid approach, and then decided to do a clean rewrite as it was not scalable.

We ran a few small sprints for other engineers on the team to give them an opportunity to rewrite something in Flutter and provide feedback. Everyone loved Flutter — you could see the thrill on people’s faces as they talked about how fast it was to build a user interface. One of the most exciting things was that the team could get instant feedback while developing. We could also leverage the high quality widgets that Flutter provided to make development easier.

After carefully weighing the risks and our case for migration, we decided to go all in with Flutter. It was a monumental rewrite of a moving target, and the existing app continues to evolve while we were rewriting features. After many months of hard work, Google Pay Flutter implementation is now available in open beta in India and Singapore. Our users in India and Singapore can visit the Google Play Store page for Google Pay to opt into the beta program and experience the latest app built on Flutter. Next, we are looking forward to launching Google Pay on Flutter to everyone across the world on iOS and Android.

Google Pay image Google Pay image Google pay image Google Pay image

We hope this gives you a fair idea of how to approach and launch a complete rewrite of an active app that is used by millions of users and businesses of all sizes. It would not have been possible for us to deliver this without Flutter’s continued advances on the platform. Huge thanks to the Flutter team, as today, we are standing on their shoulders!

When fully migrated, Google Pay will be one of the largest production deployments on the Flutter platform. We look forward to sharing more learnings from our transition to Flutter in the future.

Doubling down on the edge with Coral’s new accelerator

Posted by The Coral Team

Coral image

Moving into the fall, the Coral platform continues to grow with the release of the M.2 Accelerator with Dual Edge TPU. Its first application is in Google’s Series One room kits where it helps to remove interruptions and makes the audio clearer for better video meetings. To help even more folks build products with Coral intelligence, we’re dropping the prices on several of our products. And for those folks that are looking to level up their at home video production, we’re sharing a demo of a pose based AI director to make multi-camera video easier to make.

Coral M.2 Accelerator with Dual Edge TPU

The newest addition to our product family brings two Edge TPU co-processors to systems in an M.2 E-key form factor. While the design requires a dual bus PCIe M.2 slot, it brings enhanced ML performance (8 TOPS) to tasks such as running two models in parallel or pipelining one large model across both Edge TPUs.

The ability to scale across multiple edge accelerators isn’t limited to only two Edge TPUs. As edge computing expands to local data centers, cell towers, and gateways, multi-Edge TPU configurations will be required to help process increasingly sophisticated ML models. Coral allows the use of a single toolchain to create models for one or more Edge TPUs that can address many different future configurations.

A great example of how the Coral M.2 Accelerator with Dual Edge TPU is being used is in the Series One meeting room kits for Google Meet.

The new Series One room kits for Google Meet run smarter with Coral intelligence

Coral image

Google’s new Series One room kits use our Coral M.2 Accelerator with Dual Edge TPU to bring enhanced audio clarity to video meetings. TrueVoice®, a multi-channel noise cancellation technology, minimizes distractions to ensure every voice is heard with up to 44 channels of echo and noise cancellation, making distracting sounds like snacking or typing on a keyboard a concern of the past.

Enabling the clearest possible communication in challenging environments was the target for the Google Meet hardware team. The consideration of what makes a challenging environment was not limited to unusually noisy environments, such as lunchrooms doubling as conference rooms. Any conference room can present challenging acoustics that make it difficult for all participants to be heard.

The secret to clarity without expensive and cumbersome equipment is to use virtual audio channels and AI driven sound isolation. Read more about how Coral was used to enhance and future-proof the innovative design.

Expanding the AI edge

Earlier this year, we reduced the prices of our prototyping devices and sensors. We are excited to share further price drops on more of our products. Our System-on-Module is now available for $99.99, and our Mini PCIe Accelerator, M.2 Accelerator A+E Key, and M.2 Accelerator B+M key are now available at $24.99. We hope this lower price will make our edge AI more accessible to more creative minds around the world. Later, this month our SoM offering will also expand to include 2 and 4GB RAM options.

Multi-cam with AI

Coral image

As we expand our platform and product family, we continue to keep new edge AI use cases in mind. We are continually inspired by our developer community’s experimentation and implementations. When recently faced with the challenges of multicam video production from home, Markku Lepistö, Solutions Architect at Google Cloud, created this real-time pose-based multicam tool he so aptly dubbed, AI Director.

We love seeing such unique implementations of on-device ML and invite you to share your own projects and feedback at [email protected].

For a list of worldwide distributors, system integrators and partners, visit the Coral partnerships page. Please visit Coral.ai to discover more about our edge ML platform.

Doubling down on the edge with Coral’s new accelerator

Posted by The Coral Team

Coral image

Moving into the fall, the Coral platform continues to grow with the release of the M.2 Accelerator with Dual Edge TPU. Its first application is in Google’s Series One room kits where it helps to remove interruptions and makes the audio clearer for better video meetings. To help even more folks build products with Coral intelligence, we’re dropping the prices on several of our products. And for those folks that are looking to level up their at home video production, we’re sharing a demo of a pose based AI director to make multi-camera video easier to make.

Coral M.2 Accelerator with Dual Edge TPU

The newest addition to our product family brings two Edge TPU co-processors to systems in an M.2 E-key form factor. While the design requires a dual bus PCIe M.2 slot, it brings enhanced ML performance (8 TOPS) to tasks such as running two models in parallel or pipelining one large model across both Edge TPUs.

The ability to scale across multiple edge accelerators isn’t limited to only two Edge TPUs. As edge computing expands to local data centers, cell towers, and gateways, multi-Edge TPU configurations will be required to help process increasingly sophisticated ML models. Coral allows the use of a single toolchain to create models for one or more Edge TPUs that can address many different future configurations.

A great example of how the Coral M.2 Accelerator with Dual Edge TPU is being used is in the Series One meeting room kits for Google Meet.

The new Series One room kits for Google Meet run smarter with Coral intelligence

Coral image

Google’s new Series One room kits use our Coral M.2 Accelerator with Dual Edge TPU to bring enhanced audio clarity to video meetings. TrueVoice®, a multi-channel noise cancellation technology, minimizes distractions to ensure every voice is heard with up to 44 channels of echo and noise cancellation, making distracting sounds like snacking or typing on a keyboard a concern of the past.

Enabling the clearest possible communication in challenging environments was the target for the Google Meet hardware team. The consideration of what makes a challenging environment was not limited to unusually noisy environments, such as lunchrooms doubling as conference rooms. Any conference room can present challenging acoustics that make it difficult for all participants to be heard.

The secret to clarity without expensive and cumbersome equipment is to use virtual audio channels and AI driven sound isolation. Read more about how Coral was used to enhance and future-proof the innovative design.

Expanding the AI edge

Earlier this year, we reduced the prices of our prototyping devices and sensors. We are excited to share further price drops on more of our products. Our System-on-Module is now available for $99.99, and our Mini PCIe Accelerator, M.2 Accelerator A+E Key, and M.2 Accelerator B+M key are now available at $24.99. We hope this lower price will make our edge AI more accessible to more creative minds around the world. Later, this month our SoM offering will also expand to include 2 and 4GB RAM options.

Multi-cam with AI

Coral image

As we expand our platform and product family, we continue to keep new edge AI use cases in mind. We are continually inspired by our developer community’s experimentation and implementations. When recently faced with the challenges of multicam video production from home, Markku Lepistö, Solutions Architect at Google Cloud, created this real-time pose-based multicam tool he so aptly dubbed, AI Director.

We love seeing such unique implementations of on-device ML and invite you to share your own projects and feedback at [email protected].

For a list of worldwide distributors, system integrators and partners, visit the Coral partnerships page. Please visit Coral.ai to discover more about our edge ML platform.

Applications are open for Google for Startups Accelerator in Japan

Posted by Takuo Suzuki, Developer Relations Program Manager

image from a recent accelerator

The Google for Startups Accelerator helps founders across the globe solve for important economic and societal challenges, while helping them grow and scale their business. Due to the continued success of the program around the world, we are pleased to open up applications for our third Accelerator class in Japan, commencing January 2021. Applications will remain open until October 30, 2020.

This accelerator is designed for established startups across Japan using technology to help solve important social and environmental issues, and that contribute to the Japanese economy. This includes (but is not limited to) startups tackling:

  • Ageing society and declining workforce
  • Energy, environment, and sustainability
  • Rural revitalization
  • Medicine, health, and well-being
  • Education
  • Diversity, inclusion, and social equity

Google for Startups Accelerators provide support to later-stage companies that have already launched their product, and have strong market-fit and potential to scale rapidly in the future. Startups in the program benefit from tailored Google mentorship, product advice & credits, technical workshops, and by getting connected to other founders, VCs, and industry experts.

Each participating startup selected for the Google for Startups Accelerator program will join a 500+ company alumni network of startups from around the world, such as Selan, with their product Omister (Class #2 Japan), is improving education & childcare in Japan by providing bilingual instructors for children, and mDoc, (Class #1 Sustainability, Europe), a Nigerian startup helping people in West Africa with chronic diseases get treatment via their n app.

In summary:

  • Suitable for startups solving for societal or environmental issues in Japan
  • Application open: September 15, 2020
  • Application close: October 30, 2020
  • Announcement of selected startups: December 2020
  • Program runs from late-January 2021 to end of April 2021 (planned)
  • Please refer to the website for further information and to apply.

Building solutions using the G Suite developer platform

Posted by Charles Maxson, Developer Advocate, G Suite

Millions of users know G Suite as a collection of communication and productivity apps that enables teams to easily create, communicate, collaborate, and discover content to supercharge teamwork. Beneath the surface of this well-serving collection of apps is also an extensible platform that enables developers to build targeted custom experiences and integrations utilizing these apps, allowing G Suite’s vast user base to get even more value out of the platform.

At first glance, it may not be natural to think of the tools you use for day-to-day productivity and collaboration as a developer platform. But consider what makes up a developer platform; Languages, APIs, runtimes, frameworks, IDEs, ecosystem, etc; G Suite offers developers all of these things and more.

Let’s take a closer look at what makes up the G Suite developer platform and how you can use it.

G Suite as a Developer Platform

There are a lot of components that make up G Suite as a platform. As a developer, there is probably none more important than the data that your solution collects, processes and presents. As a platform, G Suite is both highly interoperable, secure, and also interestingly unique.

Being interoperable, G Suite lets you interact with your data--whether your data is in G Suite or elsewhere, no matter how you store it or how you want to analyze it. G Suite allows you to keep your data where it best suits your application, while offering you flexibility to access it easily. Some examples include rich integrations with sources like BigQuery or JDBC databases. Better yet, often little to no code is required to get you connected.

Where G Suite as a platform is unique regarding data is it can be used to store, or perhaps even more interesting, be used to produce data. For native storage, you may use Drive as a content repository, or store information in a Sheets spreadsheet, or collect it via Google Forms as a front end. Additionally, there are many scenarios where the content your users are engaging in (emails, chats, events, tasks, contacts, documents, identity, etc.) can be harnessed to create unique interactions with G Suite. Solutions that build off, or integrate with G Suite provide such unique business value, but regardless where your data resides, accessing it as a developer is a non-issue via the platform.

The core of the G Suite developer platform itself is composed of frameworks for developer features including G Suite Add-ons and Chatbots, as well as a comprehensive library of REST APIs. These allow you to interface with the full G Suite platform to create integrations, build extensions, add customizations, and access content or data.

G Suite Add-ons and Chatbots are frameworks specifically designed for G Suite that allow you to quickly and safely build experiences that enrich the way users interact within G Suite apps, while while the REST APIs give you essentially unlimited access to G Suite apps and data including Gmail, Classroom, Calendar, Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Task, and more. What you build, and what you build with, including languages and dev environments is up to you!

The beauty of G Suite as a platform is how you can unlock complementary technologies like Google Cloud that expand the platform to be even more powerful. Think about a G Suite UI connecting to a Google Cloud Platform backend; the familiar interface of G Suite coupled with the phenomenal power and scale of GCP!

Building with GCP from G Suite, you have access to components like the AI platform. This enables scenarios like using Google Sheets as a front end to AI tools like the Vision, Natural Language and the Translation APIs. Imagine how you can change the way users interact with G Suite, your app and your data combined with the power of ML?

Another useful concept is how you can add natural conversational experiences to your app in G Suite with tools like DialogFlow. This way instead of writing complicated interfaces users have to learn, you could build a G Suite Chat bot that invokes Dialogflow to allow users to execute commands directly from within their team conversations in Chat. So for example, users could just ask a Chat bot to “Add a task to the project list” or “Assign this issue to Matt”. A recent example of this is DataQnA, a natural language interface for analyzing BigQuery data.

BigQuery is another GCP tool that works natively with G Suite to allow you to analyze and leverage larger, complicated data sets while producing unique custom reports that can be surfaced in a user friendly way. One of the ways to leverage BigQuery with G Suite is through Connected Sheets, which provides the power and scale of a BigQuery data warehouse in the familiar context of Sheets. With Connected Sheets, you can analyze billions of rows of live BigQuery data in Google Sheets without requiring SQL knowledge. You can apply familiar tools—like pivot tables, charts, and formulas—to easily derive insights from big data.

One relatively new addition to the Google Cloud family also worth mentioning here is AppSheet. AppSheet is a no-code tool that can be used to quickly build mobile and web apps. Being no-code, it may seem out of place in a discussion for a development platform, but AppSheet is a dynamic and agile tool that makes it great for building apps fast or envisioning prototypes, while also connecting to G Suite apps like Google Sheets, allowing you to access G Suite platform data with ease.

When you do need the power of writing custom code, one of the foundational components of the G Suite developer platform is Apps Script. For over a decade, Apps Script has been the server-less, JavaScript-based runtime that natively powers G Suite extensibility. Built directly into G Suite with its own IDE, Apps Script makes it super fast and easy to get started building solutions with nothing to install or configure, just open and start coding -- or you can even let the macro recorder write code for you! Apps Script masks a lot of complexities that developers face like handling user authentication, allowing you to focus on creating solutions quickly. Its native integration and relative simplicity also welcomes developers with diverse skill levels to build customized workflows, menus and UI, automations and more right inside G Suite.

While Apps Script is nimble and useful for many use cases, we know that many developers have preferences around tools, languages and development environments. G Suite is an open platform that encourages developers to choose options that makes them more productive. In continuing to build on that principle, we recently introduced Alternate Runtimes for G Suite Add-ons. This new capability allows you to create solutions using the G Suite Add-ons framework without being bound to Apps Script as a toolset, giving you the choice and freedom to leverage your existing preferences and investments in hosting infrastructure, development tools, source control, languages, and code libraries, etc.

Finally, what completes the vision of G Suite as a developer platform is that you have the confidence and convenience of an established platform that is broadly deployed and backed by tools like Google Identity Management and the G Suite Admin Console for administration and security. This enables you to build your solutions--whether its a customized solution for your internal users or an integration between your software platform and G Suite--and distribute them at a domain level or even globally via the G Suite Marketplace, which is an acquisition channel for developers and a discovery engine for end-users and enterprise admins alike.

Now that you can see how G Suite is a developer platform, imagine what you can build?

Visit the G Suite Developer homepage and get started on your journey today.

Instant Motion Tracking with MediaPipe

Posted by Vikram Sharma, Software Engineering Intern; Jianing Wei, Staff Software Engineer; Tyler Mullen, Senior Software Engineer

Augmented Reality (AR) technology creates fun, engaging, and immersive user experiences. The ability to perform AR tracking across devices and platforms, without initialization, remains important for powering AR applications at scale.

Today, we are excited to release the Instant Motion Tracking solution in MediaPipe. It is built upon the MediaPipe Box Tracking solution we released previously. With Instant Motion Tracking, you can easily place fun virtual 2D and 3D content on static or moving surfaces, allowing them to seamlessly interact with the real world. This technology also powered MotionStills AR. Along with the library, we are releasing an open source Android application to showcase its capabilities. In this application, a user simply taps the camera viewfinder in order to place virtual 3D objects and GIF animations, augmenting the real-world environment.

gif of instant motion tracking in MediaPipe gif of instant motion tracking in MediaPipe

Instant Motion Tracking in MediaPipe

Instant Motion Tracking

The Instant Motion Tracking solution provides the capability to seamlessly place virtual content on static or motion surfaces in the real world. To achieve that, we provide the six degrees of freedom tracking with relative scale in the form of rotation and translation matrices. This tracking information is then used in the rendering system to overlay virtual content on camera streams to create immersive AR experiences.

The core concept behind Instant Motion Tracking is to decouple the camera’s translation and rotation estimation, treating them instead as independent optimization problems. This approach enables AR tracking across devices and platforms without initialization or calibration. We do this by first finding the 3D camera translation using only the visual signals from the camera. This involves estimating the target region's apparent 2D translation and relative scale across frames. The process can be illustrated with a simple pinhole camera model, relating translation and scale of an object in the image plane to the final 3D translation.

image

By finding the change in relative size of our tracked region from view position V1 to V2, we can estimate the relative change in distance from the camera.

Next, we obtain the device’s 3D rotation from its built-in IMU (Inertial Measurement Unit) sensor. By combining this translation and rotation data, we can track a target region with six degrees of freedom at relative scale. This information allows for the placement of virtual content on any system with a camera and IMU functionality, and is calibration free. For more details on Instant Motion Tracking, please refer to our paper.

A MediaPipe Pipeline for Instant Motion Tracking

A diagram of Instant Motion Tracking pipeline is shown below, consisting of four major components: a Sticker Manager module, a Region Tracking module, a Matrices Manager module, and lastly a Rendering System. Each of the components consists of MediaPipe calculators or subgraphs.

Diagram

Diagram of Instant Motion Tracking Pipeline

The Sticker Manager accepts sticker data from the application and produces initial anchors (tracked region information) based on user taps, and user gesture controls for every sticker object. Initial anchors are then sent to our Region Tracking module to generate tracked anchors. The Matrices Manager combines this data with our device’s rotation matrix to produce six degrees-of-freedom poses as model matrices. After integrating any user-specified transforms like asset scaling, our final poses are forwarded to the Rendering System to render all virtual objects overlaid on the camera frame to produce the output AR frame.

Using the Instant Motion Tracking Solution

The Instant Motion Tracking solution is easy to use by leveraging the MediaPipe cross-platform framework. With camera frames, device rotation matrix, and anchor positions (screen coordinates) as input, the MediaPipe graph produces AR renderings for each frame, providing engaging experiences. If you wish to integrate this Instant Motion Tracking library with your system or application, please visit our documentation to build your own AR experiences on any device with IMU functionality and a camera sensor.

Augmenting The World with 3D Stickers and GIFs

Instant Motion Tracking solution allows bringing both 3D stickers and GIF animations into Augmented Reality experiences. GIFs are rendered on flat 3D billboards placed in the world, introducing fun and immersive experiences with animated content blended into the real environment.Try it for yourself!

Demonstration of GIF placement in 3D Demonstration of GIF placement in 3D

Demonstration of GIF placement in 3D

MediaPipe Instant Motion Tracking is already helping PixelShift.AI, a startup applying cutting-edge vision technologies to facilitate video content creation, to track virtual characters seamlessly in the view-finder for a realistic experience. Building upon Instant Motion Tracking’s high-quality pose estimation, PixelShift.AI enables VTubers to create mixed reality experiences with web technologies. The product is going to be released to the broader VTuber community later this year.

Instant

Instant Motion Tracking helps PixelShift.AI create mixed reality experiences

Follow MediaPipe

We look forward to publishing more blog posts related to new MediaPipe pipeline examples and features. Please follow the MediaPipe label on Google Developers Blog and Google Developers twitter account (@googledevs).

Acknowledgement

We would like to thank Vikram Sharma, Jianing Wei, Tyler Mullen, Chuo-Ling Chang, Ming Guang Yong, Jiuqiang Tang, Siarhei Kazakou, Genzhi Ye, Camillo Lugaresi, Buck Bourdon, and Matthias Grundman for their contributions to this release.

Guidance to developers affected by our effort to block less secure browsers and applications

Posted by Lillan Marie Agerup, Product Manager

We are always working to improve security protections of Google accounts. Our security systems automatically detect, alert and help protect our users against a range of security threats. One form of phishing, known as “man-in-the-middle”, is hard to detect when an embedded browser framework (e.g., Chromium Embedded Framework - CEF) or another automation platform is being used for authentication. MITM presents an authentication flow on these platforms and intercepts the communications between a user and Google to gather the user’s credentials (including the second factor in some cases) and sign in. To protect our users from these types of attacks Google Account sign-ins from all embedded frameworks will be blocked starting on January 4, 2021. This block affects CEF-based apps and other non-supported browsers.

To minimize the disruption of service to our partners, we are providing this information to help developers set up OAuth 2.0 flows in supported user-agents. The information in this document outlines the following:

  • How to enable sign-in on your embedded framework-based apps using browser-based OAuth 2.0 flows.
  • How to test for compatibility.

Apps that use embedded frameworks

If you're an app developer and use CEF or other clients for authorization on devices, use browser-based OAuth 2.0 flows. Alternatively, you can use a compatible full native browser for sign-in.

For limited-input device applications, such as applications that do not have access to a browser or have limited input capabilities, use limited-input device OAuth 2.0 flows.

Browsers

Modern browsers with security updates will continue to be supported.

Browser standards

The browser must have JavaScript enabled. For more details, see our previous blog post.

The browser must not proxy or alter the network communication. Your browser must not do any of the following:

  • Server-side rendering
  • HTTPS proxy
  • Replay requests
  • Rewrite HTTP headers

The browser must have a reasonably complete implementation of web standards and browser features. You must confirm that your browser does not contain any of the following:

  • Headless browsers
  • Node.js
  • Text-based browsers

The browser must identify itself clearly in the User-Agent. The browser must not try to impersonate another browser like Chrome or Firefox.

The browser must not provide automation features. This includes scripts that automate keystrokes or clicks, especially to perform automatic sign-ins. We do not allow sign-in from browsers based on frameworks like CEF or Embedded Internet Explorer.

Test for compatibility

If you're a developer that currently uses CEF for sign-in, be aware that support for this type of authentication ends on January 4, 2021. To verify whether you'll be affected by the change, test your application for compatibility. To test your application, add a specific HTTP header and value to disable the allowlist. The following steps explain how to disable the allowlist:

  1. Go to where you send requests to accounts.google.com.
  2. Add Google-Accounts-Check-OAuth-Login:true to your HTTP request headers.

The following example details how to disable the allowlist in CEF.

Note: You can add your custom headers in CefRequestHandler#OnBeforeResourceLoad. 

    CefRequest::HeaderMap hdrMap;
    request->GetHeaderMap(hdrMap);
    hdrMap.insert(std::make_pair("Google-Accounts-Check-OAuth-Login", "true"));

To test manually in Chrome, use ModHeader to set the header. The header enables the changes for that particular request.

Setting the header using ModHeader

Related content

See our previous blog post about protection against man-in-the-middle phishing attacks.