01-11-2016, 12:17 PM
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Project Soli is using radar to enable new types of touchless interactions -- one where the human hand becomes a natural, intuitive interface for our devices. The Soli sensor can track sub-millimeter motions at high speed and accuracy. It fits onto a chip, can be produced at scale, and can be used inside even small wearable devices.
One of the big problems with wearable devices right now is inputs - there's no simple way to control these devices. At Google I/O 2015 the company unveiled Project Soli - a radar-based wearable - that can be used to control all kinds of devices. Developed by Googles Advanced Technology and Projects (ATAP) team, Project Soli can be incorporated into a range of different devices.
It's a gesture based system that can track small movements like waving your fingers - it could be an easy way to control wearables, or even give you have hands-off control of your phone. It could also allow you to enter text on a smartwatch without restricting you to the small screen.
Essentially, Project Soli is a radar system that's small enough to fit into a smartwatch. It can pick up on movements in real time, and the movements you make alter its signal. It can detect swipes, or making a fist, or crossing fingers.
Using your hand to interact with a device is typically much more accurate than working with voice recognition - and according to this video, Project Soli is sensitive enough to track "micro-motions" - unlike something like Microsoft's Kinect technology, which is not as precise. Unlike other systems that use cameras, Soli uses radar which has much higher sensitivity, so it could be used for gestures like pressing a button, moving a slider, or turning a knob.
We're still in the early days of this technology, and it will take a couple of years before it is available commercially, but it could eventually replace voice commands as the best way of interacting with devices.
At a time when most gesture-sensing technology is unreliable and clunky, Project Soli, one of Google latest cutting-edge experiments from its secretive Advanced Technology and Projects group (ATAP), provides an enticing example of the type of powerful motion controller that could actually change how we interact with everything from smartwatches and tablets to appliances and other everyday objects.
At a basic level, motion controllers are premised on the idea that a user's hands replace traditional input devices like touch screens or mouse and keyboards. Rather than touching a physical object — like a display or button — to control a device, you use hand gestures. Using hand gestures, proponents say, makes user interfaces much more intuitive and easy to use and opens up new ways for designers and developers to create better user experiences.
Radar to gestures
Project Soli's gesture-tracking takes a particularly unique approach in that it depends on radar. Radar, which detects objects in motion through high frequency radio waves, enables what Project Soli's design lead Carste Schwesig calls a "fundamentally different approach" to motion tracking.
"A typical model of the way you think about radar is like a police radar or baseball where you just have an object and you measure its speed," explains Schwesig.
"But actually we are beaming out a continuos signal that gets reflected by an arm, for example...so you measure the differences between the emitted and the received signal. It's a very complex wave signal and from that we can provide signal processing and machine learning techniques to detect gestures."
Since Soli's sensors can capture motion at up to 10,000 frames per second, it is much more accurate than camera-based systems, which track motion at much lower frame rates, Schwesig says. And unlike cameras, radar can pass through certain types of objects, making it adaptable to more form factors than a camera.
"You can do things you would never be able to do with a camera," Schwesig tells Mashable. "The speed doesn't mean you have to move extremely fast, it just means you can detect very high accuracy."
Where it's going
When project lead Ivan Poupyrev demoed it onstage during I/O, he talked about Project Soli mainly in the context of smartwatches. As displays shrink, he said, interacting with devices becomes increasingly difficult. Even the most responsive smartwatch displays can be difficult to navigate in some situations. But Soli's utility isn't limited to wearables at all. In its current form, its radar tech lives in a single tiny chip that can be embedded in about any type of device, even objects that don't have a traditional display.
Imagining gesture interfaces on everyday objects is particularly intriguing: ATAP used the example of an analog radio where gestures control the volume and station. But it could be applied to any number of use cases. Soli's sensors can detect motion at a range of about two to three feet, Schwesig says, so any device you use within that range stands to benefit. Imagine dismissing smartphone notification with the wave of a hand or pressing your fingers together to play music from a Bluetooth speaker.
Radar is an object-detection system that uses radio waves to determine the range, angle, or velocity of objects. It can be used to detect aircraft, ships, spacecraft, guided missiles, motor vehicles, weather formations, and terrain. A radar transmits radio waves or microwaves that reflect from any object in their path. A receive radar, which is typically the same system as the transmit radar, receives and processes these reflected waves to determine properties of the object(s).
Radar was secretly developed by several nations in the period before and during World War II. The term RADAR was coined in 1940 by the United States Navy as an acronym for RAdio Detection AndRanging.[1][2] The term radar has since entered English and other languages as a common noun,losing all capitalization.
The modern uses of radar are highly diverse, including air and terrestrial traffic control, radar astronomy, air-defense systems, antimissile systems; marine radars to locate landmarks and other ships; aircraft anticollision systems; ocean surveillance systems, outer space surveillance andrendezvous systems; meteorological precipitation monitoring; altimetry and flight control systems;guided missile target locating systems; ground-penetrating radar for geological observations; and range-controlled radar for public health surveillance.[3] High tech radar systems are associated withdigital signal processing, machine learning and are capable of extracting useful information from very high noise levels.
Other systems similar to radar make use of other parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. One example is "lidar", which uses ultraviolet, visible, or near infrared light from lasers rather than radio waves.
Applications:
The information provided by radar includes the bearing and range (and therefore position) of the object from the radar scanner. It is thus used in many different fields where the need for such positioning is crucial. The first use of radar was for military purposes: to locate air, ground and sea targets. This evolved in the civilian field into applications for aircraft, ships, and roads.
In aviation, aircraft are equipped with radar devices that warn of aircraft or other obstacles in or approaching their path, display weather information, and give accurate altitude readings. The first commercial device fitted to aircraft was a 1938 Bell Lab unit on some United Air Lines aircraft.[24] Such aircraft can land in fog at airports equipped with radar-assistedground-controlled approach systems in which the plane's flight is observed on radar screens while operators radio landing directions to the pilot.
Marine radars are used to measure the bearing and distance of ships to prevent collision with other ships, to navigate, and to fix their position at sea when within range of shore or other fixed references such as islands, buoys, and lightships. In port or in harbour, vessel traffic service radar systems are used to monitor and regulate ship movements in busy waters.
Meteorologists use radar to monitor precipitation and wind. It has become the primary tool for short-term weather forecasting and watching for severe weather such as thunderstorms, tornadoes, winter storms, precipitation types, etc. Geologists use specialized ground-penetrating radars to map the composition of Earth's crust.
Police forces use radar guns to monitor vehicle speeds on the roads.