
Google wins U.S. approval for radar-based hand motion sensor - Cieplak
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-google-sensor/google-wins-u-s-approval-for-radar-based-hand-motion-sensor-idUSKCN1OV1SH
======
roywiggins
> A loud clatter of gunk music flooded through the Heart of Gold cabin as
> Zaphod searched the sub-etha radio wave bands for news of himself. The
> machine was rather difficult to operate. For years radios had been operated
> by means of pressing buttons and turning dials; then as the technology
> became more sophisticated the controls were made touch-sensitive--you merely
> had to brush the panels with your fingers; now all you had to do was wave
> your hand in the general direction of the components and hope. It saved a
> lot of muscular expenditure, of course, but meant that you had to sit
> infuriatingly still if you wanted to keep listening to the same program.

> Zaphod waved a hand and the channel switched again.

[http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=1329](http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=1329)

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tb303
FWIW this is from the ATAP group @ google, which is DARPA -> Motorola ->
Google. _Not_ Google X/moonshot/rollerblades.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_ATAP](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_ATAP)

I've seen the tech first-hand and it's super cool.

~~~
mcny
Thank you for mentioning this. My initial reaction when I saw this was a
chilling sadness of "who did Google X screw over to get this?"

I hope the whole Google X nonsense gets scrapped. Doing things like they do
has a real chilling effect on sharing of ideas.

~~~
ForHackernews
Can you expand on this comment a little more? Why does it matter which
division of Alphabet corp makes something?

~~~
madengr
YouTube can censor your videos, but Google fiber can’t, though they are under
the same umbrella.

~~~
Buge
Censorship isn't really a product. Also a website censoring itself vs an ISP
censoring a website can be thought of as different actions. A website
developing a hand sensor vs an ISP developing a hand sensor seem essentially
the same. (Censor vs sensor pun not intended.)

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tootie
Having spent a fair bit of time looking into applications for gesture inputs
(kinect and leap motion mostly) I can tell you the hardest part by far will
the user experience design. Gestures are extremely unintuitive on their own.
Users need really clear prompts and/or training to understand how to use them.
And if you want to innovate and create new and subtle gestures as your product
evolves, it only gets worse.

The leap motion is already pretty good and has some useful applications, but
it's still very, very niche. The Soli looks like a real evolution of the
technology in terms of both precision and how embeddable it is, but it's going
to have the same challenges in user adoption. I'd expect this kind of thing to
get more traction in industry than in people's homes.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
I've worked in this space for educational software. You hit the nail on the
head. Detecting what people do with their hands is easy. Building a UX out of
that is hard.

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jpalomaki
Video from Google about the technology (2015):
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QNiZfSsPc0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QNiZfSsPc0)

~~~
lawrenceyan
Go big or go home. That's one thing I like about Google/Alphabet. Not being
afraid to try completely new things outside the normal comfort zone of their
traditional product space, and aiming for the most radical potentially game
changing ones at that.

I'm glad that Sergey and Larry have been able to stay at the helm, keeping
Google/Alphabet from devolving into just another short term quarterly earnings
chasing company and continuing to set up institutions in place that will
ensure the culture of innovation which has made the company so successful
lasts long into the future.

~~~
kkarakk
Go big, let your product stagnate for a couple of years coz it doesn't improve
adsense dollar revenue in a direct way and then go home.

reminder that inbox is getting the shotgun to the head this year while gmail
still feels like it's stuck in the early 2010s and that's just the most recent
one.

any area that google dominates in nowadays feels almost accidental, like they
don't actually want to dominate that area but the alternatives don't have
their datacentres and thus aren't as good-for eg youtube.

~~~
kace91
Popular wisdom is that google culture rewards too much the creation of new
projects, but not as much their maintenance \- which looks comparatively worse
in a CV or when being considered for raises. Since they also hire mostly high-
achievers, the result is that everyone wants to move into new things and "old"
products are soon left to wither.

I'd be curious to know the opinion of actual Googlers about this common
theory.

~~~
izacus
I've yet to see a single explanation why Google is supposed to maintain a non-
profitable project/product indefinetly.

If Inbox (or other projects commonly coming up on these whines) would be a
startup, it would end up on
[https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/](https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/)
a long time ago. Why would Google keep maintaining and burning money on an
unsuccessful free (!) product? Isn't "fail fast" the main praised mentality of
startups here?

~~~
rbritton
I wouldn’t expect anyone to maintain something unprofitable indefinitely, but
Google’s reputation is to offer something free long enough to destroy any
existing market and then kill it when there’s no one left to fill the void.
It’d generally be better if they never offered it at all.

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Cieplak
Interesting tidbit:

 _The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) said in an order late on Monday
that it would grant Google a waiver to operate the Soli sensors at higher
power levels than currently allowed._

~~~
raverbashing
Which is how many mW at which frequency (~ 60GHz according to article)?

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docbrown
One area in which I think this could be big: deaf culture.

Instead of a device being triggered by voice, you can trigger commands by
spelling them out via ASL and hoping NL can predict wisely or give choices ->
wait for users response signal.

~~~
lupire
There's an app for that.

[https://motionsavvy.com/uni.html](https://motionsavvy.com/uni.html)

The OP is more about 3-d recognition of mimed actions like turning dials and
pushing buttons (Virtual Reality applications) than recognizing symbols.

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DonnyV
> Facebook Inc (FB.O) raised concerns with the FCC that the Soli sensors
> operating in the spectrum band at higher power levels might have issues
> coexisting with other technologies.

Why did Facebook have a say in this? Are they building one too?

~~~
TomMarius
I'm not really sure about this in US, so take it with a grain of salt. In my
country _anyone_ can raise concerns before something like this is approved.

~~~
supergeek133
It's roughly the same in the US. Typically when changes are made to a
government accepted standard/radio frequency rules all of the currently
participating organizations are given a chance to review/debate changes.

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canada_dry
As an aging techie this is just the kinda new thing that will probably terrify
me in 10 years from now!

Just like the desktop GUI confounded our grandparents... we'll be faced with a
machine that recognizes gestures.

Not wanting to do something unintended, we'll want to avoid these things just
like our ancestors!

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everdev
A few years ago Google released a video about controlling Gmail with gestures,
as an April Fool's joke...

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buboard
how precise are those sensors? The videos show use cases where gestures are
used as a selector , but how does this perform when drawing for example?

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trumped
Google already has a pretty good idea of what you are doing at all times using
the sensors in your phone... this will give them even more information about
you... I hope at least that this new tech won't be able to read you from the
next room (through walls).

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politician
Imagine this in a bracelet form factor that puts multiple sensors in a loop
around your forearm which it uses to locate and sense the position of the
opposite hand.

VR/AR use cases suffer from poor input controls; this might be a better
approach.

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eaandkw
So with this technology will Google be able to scan anything in the room,
including the gestures? If this technology is used the same way microphones
are used in IOT devices like Alexa I have some concerns.

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techntoke
I have this this exact technology documented from 2014, except my idea uses
RFID. Could literally make anything touch-enabled, included existing touchless
monitors.

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wbl
57 GHz? What sort of parts are they using to get a consumer product BOM cost?

~~~
walterbell
They are working with Infineon,
[https://www.infineon.com/cms/en/product/promopages/soli/](https://www.infineon.com/cms/en/product/promopages/soli/)

Infineon has a 24Ghz demo board for $150,
[https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Infineon-
Technologies/D...](https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Infineon-
Technologies/DEMOSENSE2GOLTOBO1?qs=rU5fayqh%252bE1u6j6iJNnMAA%3d%3d) &
[https://www.infineon.com/cms/en/product/sensor/radar-
sensor-...](https://www.infineon.com/cms/en/product/sensor/radar-sensor-
ics/24ghz-radar/)

~~~
madengr
Screw Infineon. They won’t provide the data sheet for their 80 GHz chipset,
despite my buying $5k worth through their distributor.

~~~
SlowRobotAhead
Infineon support is truely world-class awful.

I’m looking at 100k with them this year and can’t get an answer to any
technical question in any time frame. I probably wouldn’t select them again.

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SN76477
I find gestures exhausting.

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natch
Why do they even need approval? Isn’t it really short range?

~~~
zamadatix
The article covers this in detail, was there something that wasn't clear?

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baybal2
I remember gesture controlled light switches, and other home automation being
a thing at least since eighties.

Yet again, this fires up my skepticism about soundness of American patent
system.

~~~
jsmeaton
Detecting _some_ motion with a sensor and detecting precise motion using radar
is very different. It’s a novel use of technology, and I’m for one perfectly
happy with this kind of invention being patentable.

~~~
baybal2
Do you understand that the difference there is not much bigger than detecting
motion gesture, and detecting notion gesture and claiming doing that
precisely?

Both things require mm waveradar and some non-trivial DSP functionality to
recognise gesture from clutter, and both have to be calibrated to significant
precision.

This is the that glaring flaw of current patent system where there can be 20
very similar products, but all covered by different patents with only
difference being verbage on the patent.

~~~
lupire
What are some of these gesture-control systems that you remember? All I've
seen are The Clapper and _motion_ sensors.

