This week in San Francisco, Googles holding its first-ever developer conference for Project Ara. Developed by a small team within the company called ATAP staffed with ex-DARPA engineers and some of the brightest minds at Google, Ara is a mission to make a modular smartphone. For ATAP and Google, the goal is to build a device that will make the smartphone accessible to the billions of people who cant afford iPhones and Galaxy S5s. There are huge obstacles everywhere you look, and ATAP is working on an incredibly fast timeline to turn Ara into a product people can buy — theres barely a year left to make it real.