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Google’s ATAP team works on the most advanced technology projects within Google. Of course, this team of very well qualified people was not absent from Google’s biggest developer conference of the year, Google I/O. Today the ATAP team held a keynote event where they talked about some of the more advanced technologies that Google hopes to eventually make available to consumers.
The two main and most impressive projects that Google’s ATAP discussed and demonstrated on stage were Project Soli and Project Jacquard. The main focus of this particular article is going to be focused on what Google is calling Project Soli. This is the ATAP team’s solution for wearable devices just being too small for touchscreens in their current form. So, the team set out on a hunt to find a sensor small enough to fit into a smartwatch that would also accurately track the slightest human hand movements.The teams conclusion, radar.
Putting a radar sensor in a smartwatch sounds insane at first. Typically when you picture a radar you think of those huge, industrial looking machines that you see out in a field. You wouldn’t be wrong for thinking this because Google took the same technology used in those giant machines and made it extremely small, small enough to fit in current smartwatches. But the incredible things don’t stop there. This little radar sensor is capable of tracking even the slightest of movements in your hand and fingers. This allows extremely accurate gesture control that can measure movement, velocity, and distance.
The ATAP team showed the first prototypes of the device and they were the size of thick pizza boxes at first. Google went from that to what they have now, something that size of a microSD card, in only 10 months. If you don’t know the timeframe for these types of products, that’s absolutely crazy. Google didn’t give much information on how developers would be able to take advantage of this technology in their wearable devices just yet, but they did mention that more information would be available for developers later this year. If you want to take a look at the ATAP teams other big project that they debuted on stage, Project Jacquard, you can do so by clicking here.