Google: Sodar App Can Help You Maintain Social Distancing Using AR

Several months into this pandemic, you can already eyeball six feet / two meters. But if you still have trouble — and you happen to have a handy Android device — you’ve been covered by Google, I suppose. 

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The latest project from the company’s Experiments With Google’s collection, Sodar is a simple browser-based application that uses WebXR to offer a social distance from mobile augmented reality. Visiting the site on an Android handset in Chrome will bring the app up. You’ll need to point your camera to the ground from there and move it around as the device recognizes the plane with a dot matrix.

Move it up, and you’ll get a two meter visual perimeter (that’s 6.6 feet) — the length recommended by the CDC to help curb COVID-19 spread. It is also handily listed by the organization as “about two arms long”. At this point, the app is probably cleverer than it would be useful. In the future maybe someday, if smart glasses ever really take off.

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Meanwhile, keeping a phone up to ensure that you’re a good distance from your fellow human/disease vector is a little less practical than good old-fashioned common sense.