Project Soli uses radar for gesture control

The Advanced Technologies and Projects (ATAP) group at Google recently revealed that Project Soli has been working on a new interaction sensor using radar technology to track the fine motor movements of the human hand, with the aim of bringing gesture control to wearables and other gadgets.

Ivan Poupyrev, AAP technical program leader, explains:

“The hand is the ultimate input device. It’s extremely precise, it’s extremely fast, and it’s very natural for us to use it, right? Capturing the possibilities of [the] human hand was one of my passions. How can we take this incredible capability and finesse of human actions and finesse of using our hands, but apply it to the virtual world?”

The Soli chip works within the 60 GHz radar spectrum at up to 10,000 frames per second, and is able to recognise movement, velocity and distance, and thus able to track sub-millimeter motions at high speed and accuracy. It fits onto a chip, can be produced at scale and built into small devices and everyday objects.

Watch the YouTube video below.