Welcome to Project Soli

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 “ ▶ this video

The radar chip is especially interesting. I remember being intrigued when it was presented by the ATAP team years ago: ▶ this video The team showed an impressive amount of cool stuff back then, it's nice to see one of these projects shipping on a flagship product. There's more info here on how it's used: link EDIT: found the original presentation: link . I think the touch sensitive cloth project also made it into a few products.

Hand Gesture controls bother me. I see all these fancy implementations enabling hand gestures such as the Google ATAP project called Soli [1], but none of these replace haptical feedback. One of the major aspects of any haptical human-to-machine interface is feedback and robustness. When you turn a high quality 30 indent encoder from Alps [2] or avionics grade Elma encoder [3]; you'll realize the value of haptic feedback. There is a reason why cockpits are full of knobs and dials, although unfortunately, that's changing due to highly integrated multi-function glass instruments. Problem with hand gestures is robustness. Theramins (hand gesture based music instrument) are cool, but they take forever to master and I am not saying they are trying to replace pianos, but let's just say - iPad pianos are not fun precisely because of the lack of feedback. I really think gesture based controls are inferior. They have no place in my living room, my car or anywhere in my life. That said, I think the implementation of hand gesture based systems as pointed out in this article are truly interesting. It is a challenging problem. [1] ▶ this video [2] link [3] link

In my dreams the keyboard disappears. My eyes, or fingers, move the cursor, I can speak interactively with the computer, gesture, etc. Can fingers/hands be tracked sufficiently to provide an accurate soft keyboard? ▶ this video

How old are you? It’s really not that hard to imagine the keyboard being replaced by one, or a combination, of technologies in the next decade or two. Voice has gotten dramatically better in the past few years. Another decade? There are also gesture technologies: ▶ this video Anyway, if you’ve got 3 or 4 decades of life, you still think we won’t have sufficient advances to replace the keyboard?

How about a little more innovation in keyboards? It is 30 years later. Split keyboards? link Tenting capable? Add a Soli chip? ▶ this video

Voice, eye tacking, and gesturing don’t offer possibilities? ▶ this video link And yes, if you’re clicking away in a room of programmers, it won’t work for you, but with a Hololens I’ll find a quiet location.

i'm disappointed that we haven't made more progress with voice interfaces. Many people are happy with the keyboard/mouse as their primary input devices but combined with subtle gestures like you might get with Google's Soli and we should get a better user interface for everyone. ▶ this video

Someone could devise a more subtle set of movements for text entry. Google's Soli would recognize small movements: ▶ this video There are others: link

Now we need a gesture keyboard so we can type, or twitch, instead of using an onscreen keyboard. Finger IO: link Google's Soli: ▶ this video Perhaps a modified game controller: link

Paper notebooks might be. link The cell phone, etc will be a much bigger extension. However, we still need better ways to input, organize and access the information. Handwritten notes, voice memos, pictures, drawings, unstructured and structured data, etc. Cortana/Siri with hand tracking ( ▶ this video ) and a HoloLens will allow people to organize everything in creative ways.

you can provide audible feedback when you move your hands. Many gestures don't provide anyone tactile feedback. Move your hands or fingers then something happens on the screen. Google's new chip could probably help interpret a series of gestures: ▶ this video