Last summer I shared a short video about Project Soli, an advanced Google Project that uses a tiny radar to detect and recognise small movements. The idea is to eventually create devices that can read hand movements allowing, for example, a ‘volume up’ gesture above a mobile phone to raise the volume of music being played. Project Soli they have now revealed their first prototype of a keyboard, SoliType, shown in the video below.
The keyboard demonstrated requires a lot of hand dexterity and memory to remember all the positions. The technology, however, could be used to recognise much more simple gestures.
Many people who use switches to use computers and mobile devices struggle with issues such as the force required to press the switch, the reliability of the mechanism, the positioning of the switch and so forth. While such a device has yet to be produced, the potential application as a method to control smartphones and tablets for people with physical disabilities is exciting – particularly as the chip could be integrated into new mobile devices and thus have radar-based gesture accessibility built-in as standard.
