261–270 of 325 posts
Not sure what to think about it. Seems awesome at first glance but then the examples are skipping songs and hand waving pokemons. Feels a lot like a solution looking for a problem.
Would be useful when cooking with mess on your hands and trying to scroll through a recipe.
Even then, your hands might be busy here and a voice interaction may be better.
We can finally stop pretending our sounds are the language, and get back to using only gestures :)
Not sure what to think about it. Seems awesome at first glance but then the examples are skipping songs and hand waving pokemons. Feels a lot like a solution looking for a problem.
I believe it's a documented fact that most of breakthrough technology feels like dabbling in triviality. I read somewhere (will look for source when I get time), that when Thomas Edison invented phonograph, he believed there wouldn't be no other use for it than to listen to sermons at home. I believe this __could__ over time revolutionize HCI and perhaps gaming.
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You are right that Radar follows an inverse 4th power with distance (inverse 2th power for the light to go to the reflected object then 2th power for the reflected wave to go back to your antenna). For 3$ https://fr.aliexpress.com/item/32786483344.html a 6Ghz radar that goes 12meters using 30mA, so my range claims are not that silly. When there is no obstacle 6Ghz or 60Ghz doesn't matter.
> When there is no obstacle 6Ghz or 60Ghz doesn't matter. Power amplifier efficiency for 6GHz and 60GHz is not the same-- not even close. > For 3$ https://fr.aliexpress.com/item/32786483344.html a 6Ghz radar that goes 12meters using 30mA, so my range claims are not that silly. This is a deflection and ridiculous. We're talking about spotting e.g. gestures. It falls apart with distance because of both angular resoluti…
That's not the claim I'm making. I agree that this chip won't do the gesture recognition at 10m, but I'm quite convinced that it can pick up human movement signal if they try to do so.
>I've been involved in the design of mmwave radars
I don't have this level of expertise. But I'll be really surprised if we couldn't reach the same levels of amplification. Gaining 12 dB will double the range. We can extend the antenna array or use more expensive low noise amplifiers. For cars there are 30Ghz Doppler radar, and the distance can go at least 50m.
From the referenced paper ( A Highly Integrated 60 GHz 6-Channel Transceiver With Antenna in Package for Smart Sensing and Short-Range Communications https://sci-hub.tw/https://doi.org/10.1109/JSSC.2016.2585621 ) : "In this work a 60 GHz 4-channel receiver 2-channel transmitter packaged chip targeting high resolution sensing systems and capable of supporting large bandwidth communication channels is presented. The SiGe technology used offers a low 1/f noise which is essential to the functionality of the chip in frequency modulated continues wave systems (FMCW)and Doppler radar with a sensing range below 10 m."
"While we have not explored this in-depth we would like to highlight the similarities to re-cent work exploiting FMCW RF technology to coarsely ‘image’ users through a wall [1]"
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The space mouse is like a joystick or a thinkpad “trackpoint”. It doesn’t move around or measure movements of the body, but just uses force on it to control velocity. This is much less intuitive/effective than a direct movement. A mouse beats a trackpoint hands down for speed and precision in any context where mouse-user performance is important per se (the trackpoint’s advantage is that it is already directly under…
I totally disagree based on experience with using a CAD software for many years. A space mouse isn’t a trackpoint. It is a 6 degrees of freedom device that feels insanely natural once you get used to it. There is a reason why professionals working on 3D software use a Space Mouse - animation studios to Boeing. Everyone got one when you start a new job. You should try one if an opportunity comes up. Honestly, it will…
Nothing you wrote is in disagreement with anything I wrote, except for the inaccurate assumptions about my past experience and your misunderstanding the main thrust of my comment.
I have used several different space mice, and also taken a couple of them completely apart. I understand reasonably well how they work. They have a fixed internal part which is attached to the (slightly movable) outside shell by several springs, with little position sensors used to measure a proxy for the force and torque exerted on their outside shell. I believe the early versions used strain gauges instead of position sensors, but the result was more or less the same.
> A space mouse isn’t a trackpoint.
You completely missed my point. The part that is similar between a space space mouse and a trackpoint or joystick is that all of these essentially measure force on them, with that input converted by software to velocity (or angular velocity). If you let go they move back to a neutral position instead of staying where you put them. They do not measure the direct displacement or rotation of some physical component or body part. This is different than the input of a mouse or a touchscreen or a knob or a slider or a trackball or a scroll wheel or a dial or a stylus, but similar to the input of an analog trigger or pedal or steering wheel.
> Trackball: 2 axis device
A trackball with the appropriate sensor(s) can be a 3-axis input device (i.e. if the sensor fully characterizes the rotation). There have been several such devices made as research prototypes in various universities and corporate labs, and empirically they are much more efficient to use than space mouse for inputting rotations. However, they have never (as far as I know) been commercially produced.
This is a shame, because I would love to have one, and building hardware for myself is a lot more effort than buying something off the shelf.
> try flipping through pages on iPad for 1 hour straight vs. using PageUp and PageDown keys on a keyboard. See it for yourself which one is more tiring.
This is a non sequitur. But to answer you, I am perfectly happy to flip physical pages on a book for 5 hours straight, without my fingers ever getting tired.
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Yeah, I'm noticing that more and more. I'd even say we're going backward in many ways : jack 3.5 removal, everything glued/soldered, form over function, complete lack of reparability (while advocating for mobilisation against climate change and recycling at the same time)
> jack 3.5 removal I think I agree with the rest of your list, except for this one. While the transition to USB-C is painful, I think the world of consumer devices will be better off for it in the end.
The sensor sucks because it's small. Plus as a radar it's subject to regulatory requirements. Google should have gone with a lidar-based solution, but the concept of putting lidar in a cellphone is probably heavily protected Apple IP.
Lidar requires moving parts. Not an ideal solution for something that needs to be low powered and compact.
Those growing up with Remote Controls of the kind: https://i.imgur.com/AIqz63k.jpg After a few days, the user develops a muscle memory of sorts. User doesn't even have to look at the controller and all actions (and feedback) are executed through the tactile interface. From cockpits to nuclear power plants to home tv remote control, there is absolutely nothing that replaces physical buttons, encoders, sliders and togg…
>there is absolutely nothing that replaces physical buttons, encoders, sliders and toggles Even space, versatility, & cost aside, there are definitely tasks that a touch screen does better. Using a map with a touch screen is incredibly intuitive compared to a mouse. (I cannot imagine using sliders or other "physical" interfaces) >A physical button guarantees that the action was performed by the means of feedback So y…
My mouse is far more accurate than my finger and I can zoom more accurately and more quickly with my scroll wheel, it is milliliters of finger travel as opposed to a much larger, and slower mulit finger operation.
I recently showed some videos of Soli in the HCI class I teach. Students immediately hit upon the two major issues I wanted to discuss (I was pretty proud!). The first is learnability. A big problem with gestures is that there is no clear affordance as to what kinds of gestures you can do, or any clear feedback. For feedback, one could couple Soli's input with a visual display, but at that point, it's not clear if th…
Relevant cross post from Bret Victor and hands: http://worrydream.com/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDesi... This technology seems promising in the face of his ideas.