Google's latest project is a smartphone that maps its surroundings in 3D, a development that could have very interesting implications for location services and the tracking of big data.

The search giant says it pulled together 10 years of research to create the "Project Tango" smartphone: a phone that can track its motion in full 3D in real-time.

"Our goal is to give mobile devices a human-scale understanding of space and motion," says Johnny Lee, project lead at the Google Advanced Technology & Project team. The team introduced the Tango concept in the video below:

Lee says that Google will soon get development kits out to software developers to create applications on top of the Tango platform.

This could clearly make location data collection of the user of the Tango smartphone more granular and accurate than even the satellite and cellular network triangulation systems of today.

Which could, as Lee says, make the future "awesome" but maybe a bit creepy, too. (See Here Come the WiFi Drones, Another Day, Another Domestic Spying Revelation, and Telcos Warm to Big Data.)

— Dan Jones, Mobile Editor, Light Reading