22 ms·

Soli

• imglorp 7y ago
  I wonder if that's proximity sensors or always-on gesture recognition doing image processing off the front camera. Either way, gesturing left/right/up/down doesn't seem to add more than touching the device. My Moto G6 has that now, using the fingerprint sensor as a directional swipe button, love it.
  • Klathmon 7y ago
    they specifically point out on the page that it's not a camera, doesn't capture any visual images, even works through some solid materials, and can sense in all directions around the device. This looks literally perfect for something like a smart display. I have a google home smart display on my desk, and I like to keep it back far enough that it's a bit of a reach to touch the screen and interact with it. If i could just wave in front of it, that would improve things significantly! But add in the other benefits of something like this (just being able to sense where a person is around a device like a smart speaker or display seems like it could be extremely useful for better sound projection and better microphone listening), and it seems like it really could be a game changer. I am wondering why they decided to first release it in a phone, where it seems like it has the least benefits...
    • stestagg 7y ago
      > I am wondering why they decided to first release it in a phone, where it seems like it has the least benefits... Google wanting something in your phone that allows it to track engagement? I can't think why.. :) > Engaged > Soli anticipates when you want to interact.
      • shantly 7y ago
        Plus a stationary or semi-stationary version only lets them collect data from wherever you place it. Put it in phones and pretty soon you've got whatever sort of data this thing picks up from damn near every room, every street, every trail, every car, every everything anywhere that people exist. Data to train your machine learning algos, for free. God knows what else—data to map every square centimeter of every environment in the modern world, for all we know. Their priorities are spying-first, typically, so this is unsurprising.
        • shadowgovt 7y ago
          It may help to understand Google's priorities by following up on this Hacker News link (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21271087 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21271087). Their goal is ubiquitous access. To get to that goal, they're collecting a lot of data about the world and their users to figure out where, when, how, and why users want data to optimize getting it to them. And yes, it probably serves their ad model too, but there's more to it than that; Google is helmed by a futurist and employs futurists, and is looking towards a not-too-distant future of always-on personal networks enhancing what a person can do in their day-to-day.
          • loriverkutya 7y ago
            Their goal is the same as every company's goal, earn money. If they introduce anything new, the first question is, how that will make money for them. If it is collecting data, the question is, how they can use that data to earn more money. Also as it has been mentioned by someone in the comments, I'm really not keen being surrounded by another set of devices that can "see" me CCTV is more than enough already. I also I don't want to invite google to my home to map it out. Probably Pixel4 owners are going to be asked to turn off their phone and put it into a box next to the door when they want to come into my flat.
            • shadowgovt 7y ago
              Kind of but not exactly. Money is the lifeblood that the corporation needs to survive; earning money is the goal in the sense that the purpose of human life is "eat food." The fact that the corporation is still basically privately owned though publicly traded (in the sense that the founders retain a controlling stock percentage) means that they can use the money as a means to whatever ends the founders wind up the company and point it at. They know the game is over if they run out of money, but that doesn't mean the game they're playing is "Build maximum monetary value for shareholders" any more than the game you or I are playing daily is "What will I have for dinner." They have enough controlling interest to vote that that's not what the company's primary goal is, in practice. Now, why would anyone who isn't them play that game by buying GOOG/L stock? Because in spite of the company's goal not being "maximize revenue," it's very good at generating both revenue and product people care about, and the people trading its stock are excited about that. They get a piece of the action, even if they don't actually call the shots.
    • shadowgovt 7y ago
      Convenient form factor to get it into the hands of techie tinkerers. Sell it standalone, and people have to really want to play with it. Sell it in an already-portable form-factor that is also a phone, and the activation energy to try it is lower; if it doesn't work, at least you have a working top-model phone.
    • ssully 7y ago
      I have a Google Home (Google Nest Home now?) in my kitchen and think soli would be a perfect fit for it. Between the noise of my stove and music, sometimes it's really hard to get the device to hear my voice commands. Being able to do gestures with my dirty hands would be great.
  • leggomylibro 7y ago
    'Soli' is one of Google's research projects. It's a radar-on-a-chip, and has nothing to do with the phone's cameras. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_ATAP#Project_Soli https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_ATAP#Project_Soli It'll be interesting to see how this works once it's in the hands of consumers; the videos they were showing a few years ago looked pretty cool, but it seems like these sorts of novel user interfaces need to hit a difficult trifecta of being intuitive, reliable, and responsive.
• itsfirat 7y ago
  Just touch the screen. It's already on your hands!
  • LeonM 7y ago
    Unless it is implemented in anything different than a handheld device Unless you have disabilities Unless you are not allowed to touch the device (like while driving a car) etc, etc.
• lucideer 7y ago
  > Private > Soli is not a camera and doesn’t capture any visual images. This is a privacy misconception that really needs to die (something also discussed in the W3C ambient light sensor thread recently on HN frontpage). Sensing involves privacy implications. By. Definition.
  • stestagg 7y ago
    Especially as the privacy statement you quoted is immediately followed by a diagram showing how Soli can tell if you're paying attention to your phone or not, and how many people are near-by.
  • arxpoetica 7y ago
    Strong agree. One of radar's primary utilities is imaging: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imaging_radar https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imaging_radar I wonder how they phrased it in their patents.
  • pdpi 7y ago
    We don't even need to resort to "by definition" here. They describe the tech as "detect[ing] objects and motion through various materials". We're effectively talking about the equivalent of TSA full-body scanners. How's that for privacy concerns!? Also, for a bit of pedantry, if this is literally "radar" as they say it is, then the argument that "Soli is not a camera and doesn’t capture any visual images" is arguing semantics at the level of splitting "which EM frequency ranges count as a camera and/or visual imagery" hairs.
    • aidenn0 7y ago
      The site doesn't say what band they are using, but their research articles contain a lot in the 60GHz range, which is certainly high enough resolution to capture images, particularly if you use synthetic aperture techniques (you can already do inertial movement sensing on a phone to aid with this).
  • sorokod 7y ago
    "visual images" sounds like weasel wording "A weasel word, or anonymous authority, is an informal term for words and phrases aimed at creating an impression that something specific and meaningful has been said, when in fact only a vague or ambiguous claim has been communicated."
• ranie93 7y ago
  The "dial" gesture is incredibly subtle. Kudos to them if it works reliably. MKBHD doesn't seem convinced in the efficacy of the sensor* from his Pixel 4 video: https://youtu.be/sKJ4i7p-o-4?t=326 https://youtu.be/sKJ4i7p-o-4?t=326 * from Analemma_'s comment below, the Pixel 4 doesn't seem to be running the full blown chip
  • Analemma_ 7y ago
    Ars' report [0] seemed to indicate that the gestures work great with the full-size Soli chip, but not the miniaturized one they had to cram into the phone. [0]: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/10/pixel-4-hands-on-project-soli-just-seems-like-wii-waggle/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/10/pixel-4-hands-on-pro...
  • jiofih 7y ago
    That’s very frustrating - as I mentioned in another comment above, we had this tech (using infrared) back ~2005 and it worked pretty reliably.
• shantly 7y ago
  Gonna require "the cloud" so they can collect free machine learning model training data and spy on us, I assume?
  • pacala 7y ago
    No, it’s doing all the heavy lifting on device, only sending the compressed output to the cloud for spying, err, offering you a better service.
    • shadowgovt 7y ago
      TBH, when this data is shipped up to the cloud, it may be used for customization that could be fed to the ad engine, but it's especially important for refining algorithm. A lot of the leaps in high-fidelity human-computer interaction (voice, face, and likely this new gesture system) have been made with having enough data about real-world interactions to train the models. It's how a company finds out about the ten thousand things that happen in the real world that their lab-models missed, and gets their algorithm from 90% accuracy to 99.9% accuracy.
    • shantly 7y ago
      Yeah, I saw that. If they are both 1) not equivocating, and 2) if actually telling the entire truth, don't switch to Hoovering up data if/when these become widespread (gen 2, say), I'll eat my hat. Given the company we're dealing with, I think my hat's safe. It'd be wildly out of character for them to resist collecting sensitive data from this.
• boltzmannbrain 7y ago
  Slightly off topic: Where can one find these minimalist cartoons/sketches of people for websites? Ideally free, but those options appear super cartoonish and limited.
  • ericmccarthy 7y ago
    I've found https://undraw.co/ https://undraw.co/ is a good place for this kind of stuff.
  • kirmerzlikin 7y ago
    something like this - https://www.humaaans.com/ https://www.humaaans.com/ ?
    • boltzmannbrain 7y ago
      Perfect, thank you :)
  • philipkiely 7y ago
    Those are likely custom, two sources that I like are Undraw [0] and ManyPixels [1] both of which offer free options. You can set your own color and select from hundreds of SVG sketches. That said both are quite popular so common sketches from each appear quite often on various websites. [0] https://undraw.co/illustrations https://undraw.co/illustrations [1] https://www.manypixels.co/gallery/ https://www.manypixels.co/gallery/
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
• matthberg 7y ago
  I wonder how this will impact fingerprinting of users from a privacy and security perspective. It would be useful as a means of identity verification based off of physical properties of the user beyond just their fingerprint or iris. Yet it would also be a massive privacy concern, particularly since it advertises 360° sensing.
• est31 7y ago
  This is a beautiful piece of tech for any ad company looking to collect reaction information to ads (like google): * It works at low power. Turning on the front camera and processing the visual data generated needs large amounts of power. * It can't be blocked as easily as a front facing camera. * People are less aware that they are being surveilled, which makes them less motivated to block it. * Yes, it's not capturing any facial expressions, but the information generated probably still gives valuable cues to advertisers. Also, get ready for unskippable ads pausing when you aren't looking into the direction of the smartphone.
  • krm01 7y ago
    Did not think about it that way, but that does sound like a highly plausible direction a company that ditched their 'don't do evil' mantra would take it. In fact, thinking about it some more, the reasoning behind the tech would make more sense from a business perspective vs a huge want from the user's POV.
    • folkrav 7y ago
      Google obviously does evil things. Still not an excuse to keep using this argument, which was nothing but sensationalism and clickbait. "Don't do evil" is still in Google's COC[0]. > [...] And remember… don’t be evil, and if you see something that you think isn’t right – speak up! It's not like a COC is anything legally binding, or like they didn't do anything bad before restructuring under Alphabet, either. [0] https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of-conduct/ https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of-conduct/
  • Rickasaurus 7y ago
    I'm not ready for a fifteen million merits type world.
  • scrumper 7y ago
    It'll end up in street billboards and beacons in stores too, surely. Walk past, glance at an ad, it'll hoover up your cellphone MAC...
• aloknnikhil 7y ago
  I honestly don't get why you'd need a motion sensor on a handheld device. Let alone the limited application of such an input, you'd literally need to keep the device stationary for the motion sensing to be effective. It's a usability nightmare. > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnRbXWojW7c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnRbXWojW7c This ad not only fails to sell the feature but also makes using the touchscreen look easier.
  • shadowgovt 7y ago
    For me personally, I'm going to wait a few years for the price on this phone to come down, buy a pile of them, and stick them on the wall of every room in my house. Low-power wall control panel with gestural input. Throw a bit of custom software on there, and (coupling that with Google Assistant voice recognition) it's the closest I'll get to Star Trek rooms in this decade.
  • jcfrei 7y ago
    One useful thing I could imagine is for cooking. If you got dirty hands you will (hopefully) be able to unlock the phone hands free and browse through a recipe.
    • lm28469 7y ago
      They probably dumped hundred thousands man hours and hundred millions $ on this so we can skip songs while cooking. Every time I see a project like that released by a major tech company I lose a bit of my faith in tech.
• melling 7y ago
  Google finally ships a research project in a real product and people don’t seem to understand the usefulness. Human nature for some reason often devolves to “what’s the point?” Here’s the 2015 announcement. There’s a lot of potential. Maybe we’d all benefit from “imagine what’s now possible “ https://youtu.be/0QNiZfSsPc0 https://youtu.be/0QNiZfSsPc0
  • meowface 7y ago
    It's really cool and innovative technology, but I also struggle to see the point for the common user. If this were a computer monitor or projector screen, sure. But my phone is pretty much always in my hand if it's being used in any way. If it's already in my hand, what do I gain from this? I can see how it'd be very useful for people who mount their phones on some sort of distant stand. But I feel like that's pretty uncommon; though maybe I'm just ignorant of how common it actually is. It's probably much more common for tablets, like for watching videos/movies at a distance. I do that, and I could definitely see myself using this with a tablet. But for something small that's pretty much always either in my pocket or in my hand?
    • kllrnohj 7y ago
      Your phone isn't always in your hand. In fact, your phone isn't in your hand for the vast majority of the day most likely. And it's in those scenarios that something like this could be cool if it works well. If it can detect your presence before you actually pick it up it could do things like fire up the face auth systems to give quicker unlock. It can auto-lock if you set it down and walk away without manually turning it off or waiting for the timeout. If the alarm is going off it can lower the volume if it detects your presence before you actually dismiss or snooze the alarm. There's all sorts of possibilities for all the times where you are not holding your phone. If it works well, that is.
    • rtkwe 7y ago
      One spot where it's already improving things is in the face unlock. It uses the Soli sensor to detect when you're approaching the device then uses the camera (maybe combined with to the Soli sensor) to unlock much faster than even the iPhone. In MKBHD's initial review it was fully on and unlocked before he even brought it all the way up.
• lalos 7y ago
  They should use this technology to charge Youtube video ad views depending on how many people are watching the ad on a phone. Multi-user presence will be interesting to see how it gets used as an API.
  • akersten 7y ago
    Or prevent a show from being screened to more than two people! Imagine how many missed royalties can now be collected! With Google Pay integration, the user can even be charged automatically to avoid the inconvenience of having to apply for a screening license.
    • ssully 7y ago
      I know you are joking, but I am pretty sure this was a patent Microsoft filed in conjunction with Kinect. I could be wrong about if it was Microsoft or not, but it was definitely about a camera noticing how many people were watching a digital product/ad.
      • skeptical900067 7y ago
        It was Microsoft.
• crazygringo 7y ago
  Good lord... this is a really cool piece of technology and half the comments here are just complaints that it will enable better ad tracking or erode privacy or that touch screens are good enough. This is HN. This is cool technology. Can we just stop to appreciate what cool new interfaces or game concepts we might be able to build with this, rather than jumping on the knee-jerk Google hate train?
  • Kiro 7y ago
    I agree. I completely understand privacy criticism but we don't need to fill the whole thread with unsubstantial sarcasm.
    • throwawaylolx 7y ago
      For many, privacy concerns are more important than cool tech, and this is not a Show HN.
  • puranjay 7y ago
    HN is also fiercely pro privacy. I'd say that in such cases, privacy wins out over the coolness of the technology. Personally, I find this a little too creepy for too little convenience. What can waving to the phone solve what I haven't been able to accomplish with my fingers?
  • scrumper 7y ago
    You know what else is cool? MIRV ablative coatings. Stuff is amazing - multi-layer carbonfiber wrapping that protect the sensitive innards from ABM lasers. Super lightweight, very strong, also radar absorbing: a real advance in warhead survivability and barrage effectiveness. Doesn't mean I'll be happy when one comes screaming out of the sky towards my head at Mach 24. It's not a Google hate train. Maybe, just perhaps, even people who like cool tech are feeling very uncomfortable about the kind of future this tech enables.
  • mattigames 7y ago
    I rather we do both, many precedents show us that both sides (critiques and tech creative usage) are of utmost importance
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• stefan_ 7y ago
  So, um, where is the technology that lets my phone float in free space as I execute these gestures, like in the video?
  • shadowgovt 7y ago
    I plan to use Command Strip tape and a convenient wall; your mileage may vary. ;)
  • ben_w 7y ago
    Well, there is this if levitation is really a must-have feature for you: https://www.amazon.co.uk/MASUNN-Magnetic-Levitation-Revolution-Technology/dp/B074Z59C6Z/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?keywords=magnetic+levitation+display&qid=1571240589&sr=8-3 https://www.amazon.co.uk/MASUNN-Magnetic-Levitation-Revoluti...
  • drusepth 7y ago
    Wait a few years for TVs to include the chip and rely on a little piece of levitation tech called "wall mounts". :)
• danicgross 7y ago
  Interestingly, this caused the Pixel 4 to get banned in India: https://www.androidpolice.com/2019/10/15/india-wont-get-the-google-pixel-4-as-soli-fails-to-secure-governments-nod/ https://www.androidpolice.com/2019/10/15/india-wont-get-the-...
  • s_y_n_t_a_x 7y ago
    Radar is just turned off in Japan. Wonder why India banned it.
    • darkstar999 7y ago
      It's in the linked article.
    • drusepth 7y ago
      Save you a click: >The radar uses a 60GHz frequency band to attain the advertised accuracy, and that’s exactly where the problem lies. India has reserved this mmWave band only for military and government use for now and it needs to un-license this frequency before allowing civilian use for applications like Soli. >The report adds that Google did consider disabling the radar for the units sold in India, but it still wouldn’t have guaranteed a sales permit, and removing the hardware wasn’t an option.
• arxpoetica 7y ago
  Relevant cross post from Bret Victor and hands: http://worrydream.com/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDesign/ http://worrydream.com/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDesi... This technology seems promising in the face of his ideas.
  • angleofrepose 7y ago
    A step in the right direction maybe, but it's missing half of the equation. And this seems a space where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts: we aren't half way there. You may be using your hands to gesture, but you aren't feeling or manipulating anything. Every single picture in that post has a physical thing in the hand. This product never has a physical thing in the hand.
• doctoboggan 7y ago
  I just watched MKBHD's Pixel 4 video and he said the wave gestures worked maybe 10% of the time. If that is true I hope it is a bug as shipping something like that should never happen.
• puranjay 7y ago
  > Soli is aware of your presence. I can't wait until I get my official Google-Amazon Big Brother living room portrait with built-in Soli and Alexa
• deleted 7y ago
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• lelf 7y ago
  > Motion Sense will evolve as well. Motion Sense will be available in select countries². What this has to do with the country?!
  • freehunter 7y ago
    According to other comments, various countries have banned the technology. So that's why it's not available everywhere.
• daxterspeed 7y ago
  I'd love to see PC devkits for this device. Something as simple as a USB 3 device you plug in and place under your monitor. Perhaps it will make its first "PC" appearance in a Google Chromebook? I can see a lot of eccentric users figuring out interesting ways of integrate many of these gestures into their workflow. Perhaps for navigating in 3d space or switching between workspaces? [edit] There used to be a developers page which showcased that devkits exists. http://web.archive.org/web/20181110202503/http://atap.google.com/soli/developers/ http://web.archive.org/web/20181110202503/http://atap.google... Showcase video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H41A_IWZwZI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H41A_IWZwZI
  • throwaway_bad 7y ago
    It will just join the graveyard of gimmicky vr/ar motion controllers. Leap motion, Kinect, etc. Those can track precise skeletal gestures too. I think the differentiation here is low power always on and attached to the phone with high field of view.
    • landa 7y ago
      The Kinect caused a huge wave of innovation. It was a convenient and low-cost source of RGBD data, and many robotics labs got a few when it was released.
      • throwaway_bad 7y ago
        I meant that they didn't catch on in the same way say webcams or wireless headphones caught on among consumers. I have personally built stuff with KinectFusion before so I do know how powerful it is.
      • 0xffff2 7y ago
        Could you expand on the result of said innovation? Where would I see Kinect driven innovation in everyday life?
        • throwaway_bad 7y ago
• mlevental 7y ago
  I'm sure the answer is no but can I buy just the chip?
  • lukifer 7y ago
    That's what I want to know as well. This github[0] mentions the sensor as a standalone item, and this appears to be the manufacturer[1]. This[2] is the closest I could find for purchase (24GHz, as opposed to Soli's 60GHz, and nearly 300 bucks to boot). [0] https://github.com/simonwsw/deep-soli https://github.com/simonwsw/deep-soli [1] https://www.infineon.com/cms/en/product/promopages/60GHz/ https://www.infineon.com/cms/en/product/promopages/60GHz/ [2] https://www.avnet.com/shop/emea/products/infineon/demodistance2gotobo1-3074457345633899287/ https://www.avnet.com/shop/emea/products/infineon/demodistan...
• lgleason 7y ago
  It feels like a marketing gimmick vs a useful application. Probably will be cancelled in a year or two.
  • dang 7y ago
    "Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  • suyash 7y ago
    Exactly it looks cool, but no one needs to make fancy tiring gestures to control the app when you can just do it by a few taps, not the mention most people already know how to navigate touch screens with gestures and taps.
  • davidy123 7y ago
    I have to agree. Something to get people to notice the handset, think it's unique, but it really doesn't add much value. I paid for a Google Daydream headset. Half a year ago it stopped working on their supported device (Pixel 2 - driver issues). Now they say the Pixel 4 won't support Daydream because people weren't using it, of course they weren't if they don't support it properly. They release proto tech as marketing gimmicks, which they may have long term plans for, but it's not fair to ordinary consumers to create interim abandon ware like this.
• spectramax 7y ago
  Those growing up with Remote Controls of the kind: https://i.imgur.com/AIqz63k.jpg https://i.imgur.com/AIqz63k.jpg After a few days, the user develops a muscle memory of sorts. User doesn't even have to look at the controller and all actions (and feedback) are executed through the tactile interface. From cockpits to nuclear power plants to home tv remote control, there is absolutely nothing that replaces physical buttons, encoders, sliders and toggles. I haven't formally studied UI/UX, but these are important: - Feedback for an action - Predictable steps to take an action (Muscle memory) - Fast response - Expose current state (sliders, toggles do this) There should be 0% ambiguity or the user gets frustrated. Any piece of technology that puts impedance in this process is no fucking good. User shouldn't have to "guess and wait" whether the device recognized their gesture to swipe. A physical button guarantees that the action was performed by the means of feedback. Nope, sound feedback or taptic stuff still isn't as good as the click of a button. It can be but no one engineers it well. For example MacBook Trackpad that "clicks" without moving is excellent. Seeing touch screens (one exception, phone), cap buttons, gesture controls, etc everywhere makes me sad because it has nothing to do with UX but everything to do with the bottom line (cost) and marketing, and in this case perhaps better ad tracking? I will put this in plain words - Don't trust a company that sells ads at the same time as building hardware. Either sell ads or sell hardware, not both. Google already serves software which relies on trading off privacy (even if it is anonymized). When it comes to hardware, I freak out and no way in hell this thing sits in my home.
  • 8ytecoder 7y ago
    I know it’s one data point but I never developed muscle memory for remotes the same way as, let’s say, Emacs. I always stumble and press the wrong keys. More importantly the interface on the TV is convoluted. I don’t want next channel - I usually want to go to a specific channel. With, say, Apple TV it means scrolling through a bunch of apps - much faster. Or YouTube tv via chrome cast - scrolling through the guide on the touch screen.
    • klodolph 7y ago
      Same here. Except for one or two functions, I would always end up squinting at a remote in the dark to try and read the labels. I like remotes like the Apple TV remote and the Roku remote (except for the fact that the Roku remote is a piece of utter garbage and I want to have strong words with the designer) because they focus on the essentials and let you do everything else through menus. (The Roku remote is an utter piece of trash for a couple reasons. First, it chews through AA batteries like it’s going out of style. Second, it is not responsive—there is a agonizing delay between when you press a button for the first time and when the action takes effect. My guess is that these defects are because it uses WiFi to communicate with the device, and I can’t understand why anybody thought that was a reasonable technology to choose.)
• suyash 7y ago
  I'm curious is there are any health studies done around this, what about the dangers of EMF radiation when it's on all the time so close to your body, not to mention in your pocket all the time.
• paul7986 7y ago
  Wonder if this was created exclusively in house or did Google ATAP do this again.... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18566929 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18566929
• lm28469 7y ago
  Not sure what to think about it. Seems awesome at first glance but then the examples are skipping songs and hand waving pokemons. Feels a lot like a solution looking for a problem.
  • cestith 7y ago
    It could be handy for a digital assitant to know when you're near the phone. You could use a particular motion to wake it for audio input rather than a button or having the phone always listening for audio. You could possibly use it for presenting slides, or have it measure a piece of wood or string or fabric or a package for you.
  • pas 7y ago
    Better speakerphone handling. If the device knows how far the speaker is, or speakers are, it might be able to filter noise better. Or using the chip to try to provide a consistent music playing volume when you do something in a room that involves moving closer and farther from the speakers. That said, I agree, I can't come up with anything that's truly useful and not just some over-engineered comfort thing.
  • coldtea 7y ago
    Beyond a certain level, most of modern computing is...
    • lm28469 7y ago
      Yeah, I'm noticing that more and more. I'd even say we're going backward in many ways : jack 3.5 removal, everything glued/soldered, form over function, complete lack of reparability (while advocating for mobilisation against climate change and recycling at the same time)
      • gizmo385 7y ago
        > jack 3.5 removal I think I agree with the rest of your list, except for this one. While the transition to USB-C is painful, I think the world of consumer devices will be better off for it in the end.
• llamataboot 7y ago
  I've tinkered around with gesture recognition with the Magic Leap quite a bit for art projects. I hope this gets released as a standalone product with an SDK!
  • tastroder 7y ago
    According to Google cache they had an SDK at one point [1] - guess that went down the drain after monetization. The chip itself seems to be an infineon product [0] you could buy but the interesting part will likely be the software stack. From a research perspective this is certainly cool tech. But it seems kind of odd to have an ad / landing page for an aspect of their tech you can only get as a gimmicky part of a feature phone. All the "it's not a camera" wording makes me feel like this is just a marketing campaign to say "see, we're not creepy". [0] https://www.infineon.com/cms/en/product/promopages/60GHz/ https://www.infineon.com/cms/en/product/promopages/60GHz/ [1] https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:8OjB0RVLk5IJ:https://atap.google.com/soli/developers/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:8OjB0R...
• berdon 7y ago
  This seems an awful lot like the eye/head tracking in the Amazon Fire phone and that went over super well. This type of input makes sense in certain applications/platforms but a phone isn't one of them - at least not with current phone usage patterns.
• bitwize 7y ago
  The sensor sucks because it's small. Plus as a radar it's subject to regulatory requirements. Google should have gone with a lidar-based solution, but the concept of putting lidar in a cellphone is probably heavily protected Apple IP.
  • mileycyrusXOXO 7y ago
    Lidar requires moving parts. Not an ideal solution for something that needs to be low powered and compact.
    • kins 7y ago
      There may be solid state LIDAR available? https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20161213005517/en/Velodyne-LiDAR-Announces-Breakthrough-Design-Miniaturized-Low-Cost https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20161213005517/en/Vel...
• flmontpetit 7y ago
  How does waving your hands in the air "feel more human" than using your opposed-thumb-equipped hands to interact with some material object?
• chodeboy 7y ago
  I really like the gesture controls in my bmw. They seemed odd first but now they feel quite natural. I guess the best intuition comes from the fact that one gesture is mapped to one action unlike in touch screens where e.g. swiping has a platitude of semantics in different contexts. Anyways I hope the sensor is released to the DIY crowd. I guess there is a good chance since all the tech comes from infineon and they already built small dev boards and google normally is rather open minded towards DIY.
• aantix 7y ago
  I might start sweating if it takes that much energy just to move to the next track. Edit: Not sure why this got voted down? Hold your arm in an upright position, swat to the side a few hundred times, you would feel at the very least, muscle fatigue. For repetitive tasks, you want efficiency of movement, not dramatic movement.
  • drusepth 7y ago
    I think you're getting voted down because "holding your arm in an upright position and swatting to the side a few hundred times" seems like an exaggeration of what's required to "move to the next track". I would imagine to move to the next track in a song you'd be using an action from the "Active" demos at the bottom, which may require some kind of initial motion to enter the "active" state, but also seem like they'd work with your arms resting at their sides, and be literally almost no energy whatsoever to e.g. swipe your thumb along your index finger once.
• bityard 7y ago
  Mods: can we change the headline to include a few words on what a soli is?
• rhacker 7y ago
  I think this is better for something like a Nintendo. To put it in a phone is kinda invasive. I would hope that at minimum the chip can only be specifically activated by the user in specific apps. To just have it on all the time is kinda crazy. Are they going to disclose when they can identify WHO is using it rather than just multiple bodies, etc...
• taf2 7y ago
  It will be so fun to watch my 2 year old play with this . If it’s good we’ll be happy if it’s bad it’ll be like the iOS 7 upgrade from 6 when my other then 2 year was so frustrated she threw the ipad down the street shattering into many parts
• 6gvONxR4sf7o 7y ago
  I think a killer app for this could be small screens. You could have a UI with pseudo-"buttons" around the edge of the screen large enough to see but too small to actually press, letting the interactions take place just off screen. This could let you turn a 2x2 inch screen like a watch into one that's effectively a couple inches larger in terms of the interactions available. Right now my watch's design is almost entirely constrained by having UI elements big enough to easily touch, taking up precious screen space.
• jiofih 7y ago
  The technology is amazing, as seen in previous demos, but how much of it is actually possible in the phone? The video is very underwhelming, showing simple wave motion that was possible using IR, Motorola had it even before smartphones over a decade ago.
• mortenjorck 7y ago
  As is often the case, this is some very interesting technology, but for now, we’ll only see it used in some novelty applications. An increased level of spatial awareness for phones will be huge in the coming decade. However, it will almost certainly be a result of sensor fusion between a Soli-like radar sensor, a FaceID-like ToF sensor, enhanced positioning and pose detection, RGB cameras, microphones, and a lot of ML to assemble a comprehensive picture of environmental context and user intent. Radar is one more piece of the puzzle in building products that can read the same cues we naturally use to communicate with other humans: Imagine, instead of telling a voice assistant “Alexa, turn down the volume,” where you have to use a phonetic trigger, and all the system has to go on is audio, something more natural: You look in the direction of the hardware, say “turn it down a bit,” and make a pinching gesture with your hand. The system can assemble all these pieces (you were looking at it, you spoke in its direction, you gestured) and, with a sufficiently-trained neural network, make a more conclusive determination of your intent.
• jasonhong 7y ago
  I recently showed some videos of Soli in the HCI class I teach. Students immediately hit upon the two major issues I wanted to discuss (I was pretty proud!). The first is learnability. A big problem with gestures is that there is no clear affordance as to what kinds of gestures you can do, or any clear feedback. For feedback, one could couple Soli's input with a visual display, but at that point, it's not clear if there is a big advantage over a touchscreen, unless the display is really small. The second is what's known as the Midas touch problem. How can the system differentiate if you are intentionally gesturing as input vs incidentally gesturing? The example I used was the new Mercedes cars that have gesture recognition. While I was doing a test drive, the salesperson started waving his hands as part of his normal speech, and that accidentally raised the volume. Odds are very high Soli will have the same problem. One possibility is to activate Soli via a button, but that would defeat a lot of the purpose of gestures. Another is to use speech to activate, which might work out. Yet another possibility is that you have to do a special gesture "hotword", sort of like how Alexa is activated by saying it's name. At any rate, these problems are not insurmountable, but it definitely adds to the learning curve, reliability, and overall utility of these gesture based interfaces.
  • empath75 7y ago
    Seems like being able to detect eye attention would solve the midas problem -- if you aren't looking at it, it doesn't do anything?
    • fauigerzigerk 7y ago
      That would be great, but can radar really tell what you are looking at? I suppose could combine it with a camera but that sounds less than ideal in terms of energy use. (I know very little about any of this)
      • deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
    • aqme28 7y ago
      That kind of defeats the benefit, doesn't it? The nicest thing about physical buttons in say a car is that I don't have to look at it to know what I'm doing.
• m3kw9 7y ago
  The screen is right there but you want me to not touch the screen to interact.
  • rtkwe 7y ago
    You can still do it the normal way.. It's a neat idea and new interaction methods coming up means we can experiment and maybe find things that work even better. Soli if they work out the kinks would be great because you could increase the interaction area available without having to make a bigger device.
• anderspitman 7y ago
  All I want is a small Bluetooth device (maybe wrist-mounted) with a few buttons, a slider, some sort of rotary sensor like a mouse wheel, and accelerometer. Then give me complete control in my phone over how the software interprets the actions.
• Allower 7y ago
  "Private because we don't capture images" So they think their consumers are morons
• nexuist 7y ago
  >Motion Sense will be available in select countries. Just...why? What is the point of region locking this? It's only hardware, isn't it?
  • psychometry 7y ago
    Patents?
    • rtkwe 7y ago
      It's much more likely it's just regulatory. Not every country has the same rules on spectrum usage and may require additional certification before allowing Google to use the Wi-Gig band. The FCC raised the power max for them when they approved the chip back in January. They're probably running into issues getting similar allowances in other countries (or not bothering to because of the small market). [0] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/01/googles-project-soli-radar-gesture-chip-isnt-dead-gets-fcc-approval/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/01/googles-project-soli...
  • opencl 7y ago
    Google does love pointless region locking but this is probably due to RF certification requirements from each country's equivalent to the FCC.
    • deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  • Rebelgecko 7y ago
    The 60Ghz band isn't legal to use in every country
  • rtkwe 7y ago
    It's emitting a lot of signals to run the radar it's using so I imagine it's tougher to get the approvals to do that in all countries. They might have to get per country approval for the local FCC/Ofcom equivalent before enabling it in each country because it's a relatively new class of device.
• teddyh 7y ago
  Remember the gorilla arm. http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/G/gorilla-arm.html http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/G/gorilla-arm.html
• throwaway5752 7y ago
  Oh my god, extraordinary technical feat, but do not want. Seriously, someone go out there and charge $1000 for a dumb 50" television. Give me a phone that doesn't have an assistant or this Soli and I will give a premium for it.
• Copenjin 7y ago
  Note at the bottom: > 1) Pixel 4’s Soli implementation does not include all capabilities and interactions described here
  • rtkwe 7y ago
    I wonder if that's a software or hardware imitation.
    • Copenjin 7y ago
      I hope it's hardware or they would be selling vaporware.
• GistNoesis 7y ago
  It is a nice piece of technology. It is a 60Ghz millimeter-wave radar. It is a privacy nightmare. It is already shipped. Radar uses electromagnetic waves (like Wifi but higher frequency) so it can go through walls, and even typical range for gesture recognition is less than meter, It probably can go at least 10 times as far by boosting the gain of the amplifier, it is not constrained like a theremin would be because it is already working in the far field region of the antenna. Because it work at such high frequency (but not so high that it can still go through walls), it has many very small antennas arrays, and sense sub millimeter movements even from far away. It also has beam-forming capabilities, meaning it can focus the direction in which to sense. Because it is radar, things which moves are of interests and are filtered easily from the background. Typically this piece of technology already can or will soon be able to : sense how many humans are around it, where they are, how fast they breath, how fast the heart is pulsating, who they are by computing some heart-base ID. It is low-power and always-on, 360° with focus-able attention. It is cheap because it can be made on a chip. (Edit: fixing typos)
  • JamyDev 7y ago
    Not that I don't believe you, but I would like to see some sources on some of these claims you're making...
    • BinaryIdiot 7y ago
      I mean, in theory you setup 3 WiFi base stations and you can use WiFi in roughly the same way. No where near as accurate, of course, but you can easily figure out which areas of the house a person is in. I don't see why this wouldn't be an even better way to do the same thing.
      • SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
        Assuming all this tech is actively and deliberately spying on you, wouldn't your phone in your pocket provide the same information?
    • GistNoesis 7y ago
• Meai 7y ago
  I think this could be synergetic with voice commands. It wont be useful on its own but sometimes you dont want to say every command out loud, so doing a little annoyed wave feels more natural. Soli on its own is not going to sell phones in my opinion but maybe Google is building up to a larger more aware device that can ultimately guess your entire mood, behavior and position in the room and do various things based on that. Like a sort of virtual person that would detect if you look worried and then it asks you how you are feeling today. That's a futuristic direction that I can see this going towards. For example, one usecase that I would probably like is a phone that tracks my posture during workouts and if it's really advanced, it could give me advice or fire me up on my last reps. Like a personal trainer. Right now it seems we aren't anywhere near that but this is my guess for their strategic direction.
• luizfzs 7y ago
  I was impressed when I saw it back in 2012. It took them a while to ship it into an actual product.
• junkthemighty 7y ago
  Consumers need to boycott this stuff. This chip has one purpose: surveillance. All the "features" on this press release are contrived and useless, but they are hoping it's shiny enough that we like it and want it.
  • drusepth 7y ago
    Why do consumers "need" to boycott this stuff? I want this stuff, and I want it cheap and readily available -- and hopefully more advanced over time. The "features" on this press release look useful to me as a start to something much better later.
    • qzx_pierri 7y ago
      Some people find joy in maintaining their privacy. They also ruin some of the fun, because "regular" people (non privacy enthusiasts) find joy in cool new technology like this. They make a good point, but they also probably didn't read the documentation, because it clearly says sensor data is never sent to Google.
      • junkthemighty 7y ago
        Why should we believe that this product doesn't serve Google's core business--mass data collection -> advertisement? Like another commenter said, this would be a lot more innocuous coming from Nintendo or something.
  • arghwhat 7y ago
    While I find its inclusion to be a pointless gimmick, I'd like to point out that this chip does not increase your phone's ability to do surveillance. It's going to have much poorer reach and performance than, say, the front-facing camera. The benefit of such a device is mainly that it's much better at distinguishing gestures in 3D space, regardless of lighting.
• fortran77 7y ago
  It would be nice to bring "hover" back to touch applications. You can have hover with a mouse but not with your finger. Good for tool-tip style help.
• hiccuphippo 7y ago
  This reminds of the cellphone surveillance system from that one Batman movie. Scary stuff.
• theAS 7y ago
  This doesnt make sense for phones. But when it becomes reliable, it will be a good usecase for smartwatches. It already has less screen area and limited option for button input. So gestures makes sense.
• gkfasdfasdf 7y ago
  I wish they could use this to turn off touch input on the screen when I'm not looking at the phone.
• tomekjapan 7y ago
  Lots of negativity in the comments here, but I personally will love to have a way of interacting with the phone even when my fingers are wet or dirty.
• yalogin 7y ago
  Why is this needed? I can see there are some niche needs like when you are cooking and cannot touch the screen. But that is what voice is for. What exactly is soli solving? Looks like over engineering to me, simply because they can.
  • sturmeh 7y ago
    Let's not pretend voice isn't also a huge novelty. Yes the gestures are majorly a novelty, but the fact is, this is a radar, not a gesture sensor. It would be capable of determining if you're in a dangerous situation (by sensing assault / weapons), it could help a blind person avoid walking into walls, or simply chime when it falls out of your pocket. Some of these have very high power requirements which is why it's not entirely practical to bake it into the phone as a common feature, but they're all entirely within the realm of possibility.
• ppeetteerr 7y ago
  I can't take Google seriously. Every time they add a new feature, my mind goes "and then they will sell you ads on this geospatial information".
• rland 7y ago
  I could see this being extremely useful in the health space, since you could interact without touching anything and transmitting bad bugs.
• earth2mars 7y ago
  why no one talks about health and safety of this technology?Not that it will cause any issues, but interested and curious about any peer reviewed studies on how prolonged exposure of 60GHz with close proximity to the body will affect? If there is none, I would love to jump on to the ship. Because, it is so cool! if there is something or have no evidence, then the community or the experts should talk about it and push for proper studies before 10 years from now folks exposed with Soli got cancer!
  • igornadj 7y ago
    There's nothing special about 60GHz, it's just like any other radio transmitter that's been around for decades. The safety is well understood and apart from some pseudoscience around it (as has been for every new tech, including microwave ovens, cellphones, 5g etc.), there are no concerns.
• simonebrunozzi 7y ago
  I'm Italian, and I can tell you us Italians have waited for this for at least two thousand years! We can finally stop pretending our sounds are the language, and get back to using only gestures :)
• aaron695 7y ago
  I go to the digital world for abstract. Why the fuck do I want real world interactions within the digital one? To slow me down? If I want to move my hands I'll go play a game of sports in the fresh air.
• reaperducer 7y ago
  Meanwhile, deep in the bowels of Google... if (handwave.slows > 10%){ do: flag: arthritis do: alert: advertisers }
• glenvdb 7y ago
  In an earlier iteration of the web page they had really cool examples of controlling sliders, radial dials, panning surfaces, highly specific pinch gestures etc. All of those have been removed and now it's just waving. It's cool tech and requires solving lots of hard problems, but it's a shame it falls so short of the initial vision.
  • sharcerer 7y ago
    Still there. some of them.
• choicenotchance 7y ago
  This is just a solution looking for problems. Unless it can help making my dream come true - of being able to open up my workspace (basically all apps in my laptop/desktop - IDE/browser/VLC/File Explorer.. basically my entire laptop OS UI) in thin air anywhere (as AR with glasses/goggles or projected hologram screens a la Iron Man) and allow me to work with a small trackpad and keyboard, it's just another toy innovation. Why can't the Iron Man type interface be a reality by now? Meta AR seemed to have a grip on it, not sure if they've made an affordable commercial version that can support OSs out of the box - Ubuntu/Windows etc so that users can continue work in their workspaces right after putting the glasses on. Basically I want to be able to code or watch youtube anywhere, in any comfortable position - lying down or on toilet seat or in a car.
• classified 7y ago
  So now Pixel phones have the perfect spy chip and they call it "private" because it doesn't record images. But then they don't say what data it records and what they do with it. What they do have is boatloads of stupid buzzwords for the dumbest phone user imaginable. That doesn't bode well at all.
• prirun 7y ago
  I wish Google would figure out how to do speech-to-text without mistakes before they start dabbling in radar.