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Soli

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Re: Soli

#301
post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If it was easy to spot and precisely track small objects at 10m, 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 amplificati…

Your second quote seems out of context and doesn't occur in the paper you cite. Your first quote says "sensing range below 10m". Yes, it is possible to make long range 60GHz systems-- largely through antenna gain and lenses. Yes, we could build an entirely different radar to track peoples' gross movement--- and could have 20 years ago, too-- but that has largely nothing to do with the original system or your original…

Sorry I mismanaged my tabs, the second citation is just above the conclusion in the referenced paper (https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2984565 ) "Interacting with Soli: Exploring Fine-Grained Dynamic Gesture Recognition in the Radio-Frequency Spectrum"

> Suggesting one can go 10x as far (10000x power alone) and through walls is... creative.

I was going for conservative. Typically thinking about open-space work environment. The device doesn't need line of sight like a camera would, it can be in your coworker pocket and listening to you.

They are well founded and doing their own radio chips, I give them the credit they deserve and assume they can replicate a somewhat similar technology (6Ghz radar).

It is better to use a logarithmic scale. The 10000x power (40dB gain) doesn't mean you will need to emit 10000x more power, in practice you will amplify the signal, by focusing the beam via antenna design, and amplifying which theoretically you can do relatively easily as long as you are above the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation noise. Then you need to do some trickery to trade bandwidth for signal strength (which they do : FMCW). Then you still can integrate over time. A radar typically scan its whole surrounding, but if instead you chose to focus it at one place you can gather for longer.

Re: Soli

#302
post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

>If it was easy to spot and precisely track small objects at 10m, 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 amplificati…

> I'm quite convinced that it can pick up human movement signal

Yea, that's not new with the 60Ghz, it's already possible with wi-fi signals, even the pose can be estimated:

http://rfpose.csail.mit.edu/

Re: Soli

#303

It is a nice piece of technology. It is a 60Ghz millimeter-wave radar. It is a privacy nightmare. It is already shipped. Radar uses electromagnetic waves (like Wifi but higher frequency) so it can go through walls, and even typical range for gesture recognition is less than meter, It probably can go at least 10 times as far by boosting the gain of the amplifier, it is not constrained like a theremin would be because…

> In the case of Pixel 4, the model runs on device, never sends sensor data to Google servers, and helps it interpret the motion to Quick Gestures. From the "Technology" page linked at the top. Personally, I don't see how it is meaningfully any worse for privacy than the always on microphone in the google assistant. And I look forward to what it will enable for VR and AR tech!

> the model runs on device, never sends sensor data to Google servers

Would you by any chance be interested in buying a bridge in Brooklyn?

Re: Soli

#304

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…

>>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 there is a big advantage over a touchscreen, unless the display is really small.

That's the same reason for why I think voice controls are literally the worst way to interact with a computer ever(although I think this might actually top it).

Re: Soli

#305
post #58

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.

A ziplock bag already does that.

Re: Soli

#306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the one and only suggestion so far that makes sense. It would be nice when cooking. If I was sitting in a bus/train/plane/concert/ , there is no chance in hell I am waving my hands at a phone. I would even feel silly doing it at home.

Controlling audio also seems pretty big with the assumption that gestures work "through various materials for seamless interaction" as the website says. The dial, slide, and swipe gestures look perfect for adjusting volume and skipping songs without taking your phone out of your pocket. Technically a smart watch could also do this (though I'm not sure if it'd be equally smooth), but I also can't remember the last tim…

Controlling audio doesn't seem like a perfect use case at all.

When you control volume you usually want to make it quiet and stay quiet - e.g. someone is sleeping but you want to continue working (moving) and you don't want to accidentally turn it back up.

The other time when you control volume is when you want to make it louder and then dance (moving) and you don't want the volume to jump up and down.

Only other case that I can think of is when you want to turn the volume up or down just a tiny bit, which actually seems like the worst use case for this technology.

Re: Soli

#307
So now Pixel phones have the perfect spy chip and they call it "private" because it doesn't record images. But then they don't say what data it records and what they do with it. What they do have is boatloads of stupid buzzwords for the dumbest phone user imaginable. That doesn't bode well at all.

Re: Soli

#308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would be useful when cooking with mess on your hands and trying to scroll through a recipe.

A ziplock bag already does that.

And you don't see any benefit of not having to put your phone in a ziplock bag?

Re: Soli

#309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The second one seems more of a technical one and can be solved if Soli can reliably recognize user attention, which can effectively be a "hotword" for gesture. This is hard and not sure even it's feasible with this tech, but given all the excitements in this thread on potential privacy issues I guess it's doable :D The first one seems more troublesome. This is less intuitive than touch screen based interface. The onl…

If you can use a hot-word, what's wrong with using voice recognition to achieve what you want to do anyway? Using voice takes less effort.

sometimes voice is less appropriate. I would much rather use a gesture than voice command in a library or at work

Re: Soli

#310
post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A ziplock bag already does that.

And you don't see any benefit of not having to put your phone in a ziplock bag?

I sure do, but it seems like an overkill to upgrade my phone just so I don't have to put it in a ziplock bag.

It makes more sense to upgrade the kitchen equipment to provide this functionality.

But then again, I don't see a point in sending all of my movements to a server in cloud just so I can scroll down a recipe.

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