J.K. Shin, President and CEO of IT and Mobile Communications Division at Samsung, presents the new Samsung Galaxy Gear smart watch (Photo : Sean Gallup/Getty Images)
Google has demonstrated Project Soli, a new kind of tech that lets people interact with their smartwatch without having to touch the device in the first place.
The project was done by the search engine giant's Advanced Technologies and Projects (ATAP) division. They used tiny radar sensors that can be programmed to translate different hand movements into digital signals, essentially making them gestures or commands for a computer.
Radar tech usually requires huge amounts of computational power from a computer. Last year, the developers kit for Project Soli was only usable in controlled environments as it required a laptop or a desktop in order for it to run.
It was one of the glaring problems for the tech. Google's ATAP then worked on making it more efficient by making it work with a smartwatch which has far less computational power compared to a desktop or laptop.
Project Soli now works with a reduced power consumption by 22 times, TechCrunch reported. It is now considered to be 256 times more efficient compared to the original project.
With a more efficient version, the ATAP team of geniuses were able to fit the radar tech into a smartwatch. Users will be able to interact with the device without even touching it.
The problem for downsizing the tech is that it is now harder for the radar to pick up signals. It is also harder for programmers to setup which gestures do what commands, The Verge reported.
ATAP researchers then tried to make basic gestures first. There are two zones that they have programmed for the computer to recognize: far and near.
Proximity would be Project Soli's base foundation for the gestures. The closer the user's fingers are, the finer and better the radar would be at recognizing the gestures.
Besides the smartwatch, Project Soli can also work with prototype speakers from JBL. They have demonstrated that they were able to control the speaker's volume just by air gestures and without even pressing a button.
Google's ATAP team will still need to refine the technology and they are planning to launch a beta-quality developers kit next year for Project Soli. Products with the tech could still be a little far out.
