VR is the heat of this year, and it has squeezed out the limelight of wearable devices. This year's Google I / O is no exception, hardware, all-in-one, Daydream platform, as well as Google Home, Android Wear have updated progress. But most people may have overlooked another thing: Project Soli.
Compared to the rapid progress in the VR field, the technical iteration of wearable devices has been quiet for a long time. The emergence of this chip may not only be an innovation in the field of wearable technology, but also an iteration of the operation of cars, the Internet of Things and even VR games. Now let's decrypt the chip called Project Soli for somatosensory interaction.
Project Soli announced in Google I/O in 2015, a gesture-sensing sensor for wearable devices that uses microchip radar to perform contactless virtual tool gesture interactions. On the third day of I/O 2016, Google announced new developments in Soli.
Behind Soli is ATAP
Project Soli was developed by a Google-based division called ATAP. Google ATAP is an innovation department similar to Google X. Its predecessor was led by Regina Dugan of DARPA. The main works include Project Ara, Real-time 3D projection (Tango), and Cinema VR (Spotlight Stories). Dugan switched to Facebook at the beginning of the year and seemed to have Ara in trouble. But ATAP is still completing new developments in the Jacquard touch-sensiTIve fabric project and Soli this year.
After Dugan's departure, ATAP seems to shift part of its focus from research to commercialization. Soli is working with companies such as LG, Qualcomm and Harman JBL.
At the I/O 2016 conference, a modified LG Urbane smart watch was exhibited, which not only senses the movement of the fingers, but also the distance between the hands. When the hand is far away, only the interface of time can be displayed, and the hand is slowly approaching, and the function is gradually increasing.
In addition to LG, Soli is also used in the Harmony JBL sound. Not only can you judge the slight movement of your finger, you can adjust the volume by sliding left and right, and you can also recognize the command of the whole hand.
What was Soli doing in the past year?
The technology was released at last year's I/O conference to recognize user gestures at a distance.
Now, the new Soli is only one-third of the original size, and the power consumption is reduced from 1.2W to 0.054W, which is compatible with the LG Watch Urbane smart watch. Soli has a radar detection update rate of 18,000 FPS with an accuracy of millimeters and the ability to detect distances and adjust user interface options to be virtually unaffected by light and materials.
Soli works the same way as a radar. It uses a very wide beam to diverge electromagnetic waves, and objects that are scanned by electromagnetic waves absorb this energy and reflect a portion back to the signal receiver. The intensity of the reflected signal is related to the material, size, and moving speed of the object.
Soli tracks and recognizes gestures based on the subtle movements of the wrist and fingers. To enable a single chip sensor to do this, they customized a new radar sensing mode with new hardware, software and algorithms. In fact, Soli's spatial resolution is rougher than most fingers' precise indications, so they rely on the subtle differences in reflected signals to recognize gestures.
Soli's goal is clear: to create the industrial and design language of radar-based electronics. The so-called design language is easy to learn instructions, and at the same time can achieve flexible control, mainly inspired by the existing physical control gestures, so that users feel natural. Because of the sense of interaction, Soli's main focus is on the eyes rather than the hands, even the physical interface.
In the beginning, Soli researcher Ivan Poupyrev asked the team not to be limited to experiments, trying to use radar on smart watches. Poupyrev believes that if a thing can be used on a smart watch, it can be used anywhere else. In addition to smart watches, it can be used on other wearables, mobile phones, cars and all IoT objects.
Jaime Lien, Soli's main R&D engineer, said that one of the major changes in small radar chips and radars is the machine learning algorithm, which transforms the spatial signal of gestures into a language that computers can understand. One of the big difficulties is the capture and noise of information. Exclusion.
Nick Gillian, a major mechanical engineer, revealed that Soli's first design language was “nearâ€, and the command interface was obtained by ranging.
Is Soli the future of smart watches?
In recent years, the development of intelligent hardware and smart wear seems to be in a dilemma. Most of the products are only the appearance of functional updates, and the iteration of technology is rare. As far as smart watches are concerned, there are only a few functions, and even Apple watches, which have always been known for innovation, are in an embarrassing situation.
The more similar products are gathered in this industry, the more intense the price competition, and the profits will be divided. Change often starts here. It is said that next year Google will launch a smaller Soli chip and launch a new developer suite, allowing engineers to develop more fun games.
But when it comes to the application of this chip on the device, it is not so optimistic. According to Engadge, it’s just that although Google’s progress has been rapid in the past year, it sounds a bit far from the emergence of general consumer products.
Indeed, Google’s smart wearable devices have been very advanced in recent years, and everyone’s embarrassment for Google Glass has been very strong. But for a variety of reasons, the device has stopped selling and stopped the entire development process. For the future application of Soli, there are still many problems to be solved.
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