BB-8 and other Star Wars favorites bring Google’s Project Tango to life

We are on the cusp of some big breakthroughs for augmented reality, and a little soccer-ball-like droid wants to show you how it works.

A developed called Trixi Studios has uploaded a video to YouTube that tests out Google’s Project Tango “mixed reality” platform with characters from the Star Wars universe. In the clip, we see a digital BB-8, a stormtrooper, and Boba Fett walking around and interacting with the real world. This is because Project Tango can detect physical objects, which enables these computer-generated characters to understand where they are. Mixed reality — which is another name for augmented reality — is one of the big leaps that companies like Google, Microsoft, and Magic Leap are working on. It is likely that we’ll begin seeing this tech in consumer devices before the end of 2016, and tech advisor Digi-Capital predicts this market — along with virtual reality — will grow to $150 billion by 2020.