Project Soli uses radar to bring hand gestures to devices

Google's Project Soli is a radar-based gesture control technology that lets you interact with devices using gestures. It was introduced last year, but the chip was huge to use in smaller devices like smartwatches. Now Google's team working on Project Soli has reduced the size of the chip by three time making it smaller and reducing power consumption as well.

Project Soli also gets improved processing power and now utilizes an optimized Snapdragon 400 SoC and Intel SoC, backed by 1GB RAM, WiFi and Bluetooth.

The main technology involved in Project Soli is the radar. A tiny chip that has sensor to track finger movements such as flick or snap is installed into a device. When you make gestures the device will be able to read it and perform the action.

At Google's I/O 2016, Project Soli was demoed on two devices, LG smartwatch and JBL Harman speaker. Performing various gestures on the smartwatch lets you scroll through messages, see information and more. Similarly, the JBL Harman speaker can also read gesture, letting you turning on the speaker, switching track or adjusting the volume by moving your hands toward the speaker, waving in front of it or use virtual dialing motion.

The Soli beta developer kit will be available in 2017 and includes latest version of Soli hardware which is smaller and consume low power. 

Via