
Tiny Radar Chip Revolutionizing Gesture Recognition: Google ATAP’s Project Soli - elijahparker
http://www.allaboutcircuits.com/news/radar-chip-revolutionizing-gesture-recognition-google-atap-project-soli/
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Animats
Small radar ICs will be useful for other things.

Radar gives you range rate directly. Getting range rate from vision is hard
and takes several frame times at least. If you have position and range rate
and dump it into a machine learning system, gesture recognition should be
straightforward.

It's not clear how useful this will be for GUIs in general. It could be useful
for interacting with large screen displays, where you may be too far back for
touch and a mouse is a pain. A presentation version could be useful.

(Presentations from computers still look lame. The audience usually sees the
presenter's desktop while they futz with the computer, then enter PowerPoint.)

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semi-extrinsic
> Presentations from computers still look lame. The audience usually sees the
> presenter's desktop while they futz with the computer, then enter
> PowerPoint.

1\. Unplug VGA/HDMI cable

2\. Do all of the futzing

3\. Plug VGA/HDMI cable

This is a solved technical problem. That people can't be bothered is the real
problem.

~~~
kevhito
Alternative if you present regularly:

1\. Enable "extended destkop", rather than "mirror desktop".

2\. Select an appropriate wallpaper, or just black.

~~~
digi_owl
Best i can tell, presenters use mirror so that they can see their own slides
on the screen while talking.

Frankly i think a seldom talked about Android feature may be a better
solution.

[https://developer.android.com/about/versions/android-4.2.htm...](https://developer.android.com/about/versions/android-4.2.html#SecondaryDisplays)

~~~
semi-extrinsic
I think PowerPoint already does this; Keynote's had it for ages, and I've done
it on Linux with Beamer a few years back. You have presenter's notes with a
small slide preview on the screen in front of you, actual slides on the big
screen.

These days I run my presentations in reveal.js (HTML5), so the output is
trivially cross-platform and videos, 3D content etc. always work flawlessly.
This also has speaker notes, implemented as two browser windows (one for each
screen) with linked controls.

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peter303
I though the auto industry was commoditizing this technology with minature and
cheap technology.

This also happened with air bag accelerometers which sell for dimes now. They
were first used to detect falling laptops and retract rotating disk arms to
save disks. Then you put two or three in mobile devices figure out the 3D
orientation of screens.

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sheraz
I always wondered how the phone knew its orientation. Then I saw this video.
Wow.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZVgKu6v808](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZVgKu6v808)

This is from a series of videos called "Engineerguy"

~~~
mrestko
His videos are wonderful.

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jmount
In my opinion this is awful for those of us who have to help people do things
from time to time. Yet another UI that is impossible to walk somebody through
over the phone.

~~~
Numberwang
I'm working in tech support and your post just made my hair turn white.

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Animats
If this is available with a few meters of range, it has potential for
automatic door control. Star Trek quality door control has been done
experimentally [1] but the standard sensors are too dumb. You want range,
azimuth and range rate. This is no big deal in a radar; it just costs too
much.

If someone is moving fast, the door opens sooner, and faster. Moving parallel
to the door should not trigger it. (In Japan, automatic sliding doors on
street storefronts are common, and false triggers from passers-by are a
problem.) With good sensors on both sides, you can open the door further in
advance if there's someone on the other side. This allows opaque automatic
doors.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhrLetrTSYA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhrLetrTSYA)

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jdhawk
60Ghz radio, 2-3 foot range.

    
    
       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.
    

[http://mashable.com/2015/05/30/google-project-soli-
analysis/...](http://mashable.com/2015/05/30/google-project-soli-
analysis/#I.OrHXCphqqm)

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Aelinsaar
This is really exciting. It's sort of clear that there is no one killer
interface, but truly robust gesture recognition, DL driven natural language
interfaces, and speech recognition start to describe a nice landscape for VR
and AR.

When I'm trying to create a lot of text, I'll still use a keyboard, but most
of the time that's not what I want to be doing.

~~~
melling
Yeah, most developers say they'll stick with a keyboard.

I'm still holding out for the clever person who integrates gestures into a
keyboard killer. You can use gestures chords, for example. With intellisense
and other intelligent completion, the future might not need a keyboard.

Here are some other gesture solutions:

[https://github.com/melling/ErgonomicNotes#gesture-
computing](https://github.com/melling/ErgonomicNotes#gesture-computing)

~~~
shostack
I wonder if they have to be exclusive.

How cool would it be to have a keyboard where you can hold down a "gesture
button" or just move your hands/fingers over a certain zone and have it pick
up small gestures? You'd barely need to move your hands and could probably
keep your wrists in the same position.

This could then do things like more natural scrolling, cursor control,
obviously more complex actions.

They keyboard is great for what it does, but improving input doesn't
necessarily have to mean getting rid of something that works quite well and
completely reimagining it.

~~~
Aelinsaar
What has probably seen the end of the road, is the mouse.

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Natanael_L
Not yet. There's few things matching its combination of speed and precision.

It's more believable that computer mice will get tech like Soli integrated to
become smarter.

~~~
Aelinsaar
So... a mouse and a motion control transceiver in one? That could be fun.

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krapht
I wish there was more technical detail. I would love to know the performance
characteristics of the radar, and what techniques it uses (eg. is it fully
coherent, waveform repetition frequency, etc).

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neurotech1
They've had "small" radar modules for a while, commonly used as microwave
movement detectors[0] Also, here is the manufacturer brochure[1]

[0] [http://dangerousprototypes.com/blog/2013/08/21/breakout-
boar...](http://dangerousprototypes.com/blog/2013/08/21/breakout-board-uses-
hb100-doppler-motion-sensor/)

[1]
[http://www.agilsense.com/useruploads/files/01_HB%20selection...](http://www.agilsense.com/useruploads/files/01_HB%20selection%20list%20ver300.pdf)

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ChuckMcM
The difference being Multi-Antenna Synthetic Aperture RADAR vs single antenna
RADAR.

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wyager
Precisely. You need synthetic aperture (or similarly complicated Fourier
analysis) with multiple transceive pathways to get a good 3D model of the
environment.

It's very impressive that this project managed to miniaturize both the radio
hardware and the computational hardware required for this. You need to perform
FFTs very fast to make this work.

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jhallenworld
Many alarm systems have gunn-diode microwave motion sensors in them. Replace
this with high-resolution radar and networking for house-wide whole-body
gesture recognition.

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mrfusion
This might be great for vr? How does it compare to leap motion?

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intrasight
Cool. So when can we get our hands on (or should I say hands off) developer
kits?

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dudifordMann
Another great tool for touch-less interfaces. I think the odd aspect of this
Google I/O demonstration is the novelty usage of the technology for a smart
watch. This tech seems like it is more difficult than it's worth in that form
factor, but for devices that must remain sanitary, say in a kitchen, or a
medical device in an OR, I like the potential.

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trhway
so they are using something like 60-66GHz which beside small antenna size
advantage makes for the fastest attenuation
[http://www.propagation.gatech.edu/ECE6390/project/Fall2012/T...](http://www.propagation.gatech.edu/ECE6390/project/Fall2012/Team09/Team9GeoSatTech_website_FINAL/SatCom%20website/images/GaseousAttenuation.png)
. Pretty logical.

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internaut
I want to combine one of these chips with a magic mirror.

If this works, then it is one of Google's greatest projects, the number of
applications are huge.

