Latest Android Experiments Include a Home Screen Arcade, Animal Detection, and More

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We generally see new Android Experiments sprinkled in throughout the year, but with Google I/O coming up there was a wave of projects that the company just made public on their landing page. For those unaware, Android Experiments is a way for Google to document and showcase some creative and open source projects that utilize Android in one way or another. The goal here is to show off some creative ideas in hopes to inspire other developers to build something bigger.

Animal Detection Device

5 new Android Experiments were published recently with the first being a device that uses machine learning & Android Things to detect animals in the wild. The project uses cameras, sensors and neural networks to detect when a bear, moose, elk or mountain lion is present. When something is detected then it records an image as well as the environmental data.

Shortstories

Next up is an experiment called Shortstories and this one is a whole platform for text-based games using various elements of the Android System UI.

Notifications indicate scenarios in a story, App Shortcuts provide a means of making a choice, and then there’s icons, vibration patterns and sounds the different scenarios and actions available.

Home Screen Arcade

Then there is the Home Screen Arcade experiment which uses the wallpaper of your home screen as a canvas for an arcade game. The demo video shows you laying out arcade buttons (which are widgets) and then using them to play a game of Space Invaders on the home screen and behind your icons. There are also some other games available in this experiment though, such as Pac-Man and Tetris.

Camarada

The next Android Experiment that was recently published is one called Camarada. This is an application that both syncs and links nearby smartphones to form dynamic camera arrays. Once the application has been installed and launched, it will check for other devices which are also running the software. Once paired, you can produce some 3D video that previously required expensive equipment to do.

Taskzy

Lastly is an experiment called Taskzy, which is an application that opens other applications for you based on the task you need to complete. Taskzy can also just remind you to open a specific application though, which again, is based on the context of the task you need to complete.

As we near Google I/O, we hope to see more and more interesting experiments come out of the Android Experiments project. Although some of these projects don’t really serve any practical purpose, they still demonstrate what’s possible for developers to make on the Android platform. We hope these projects inspire some of you to go out and create innovative apps!