FCC greenlights Google’s radar-based gesture tech ‘Soli’

Google has won US regulatory approval to go ahead with a radar-based motion sensor that could make touchscreens look obsolete in the coming years. Known as the Soli Project, the initiative began in 2015 inside Google’s the Advanced Technology and Projects unit, a group responsible for turning the giant’s cutting-edge ideas into products.

We’ve seen a number of Soli’s technological breakthroughs since then, from being able to identify objects to reducing the radar sensor’s power consumption. Most recently, a regulatory order is set to move it into a more actionable phase. The US Federal Communications Commission said earlier this week that it would grant Project Soli a waiver to operate at higher power levels than currently allowed. The government agency also said users can operate the sensor aboard a plane because the device poses “minimal potential of causing harmful interference to other spectrum users.”

Soli fits radar sensors into a tiny chip the size of an American quarter to track slight hand or finger motions at high speed and accuracy. That means instead of twisting a knob to adjust the volume of your stereo, you can rub your fingers over a speaker that contains a Soli chip as if sliding across a virtual dial. Under the regulatory order, you would also be allowed to air press a button on your Soli-powered smartwatch in the future.

Aside from clearing safety concerns, the FCC also found that the sensing tech serves the public interest: “The ability to recognize users’ touchless hand gestures to control a device, such as a smartphone, could help people with mobility, speech, or tactile impairments, which in turn could lead to higher productivity and quality of life for many members of the American public.”

We have contacted Google to ask for more detail and will update the story when and if we get a response.

The regulatory consent arrived months after Facebook raised issues with the FCC that the Soli sensors operating at higher power levels might interfere with other device systems. The two firms came to a consensus in September and told the FCC that Soli could operate at power levels higher than what the government allowed but lower than what Google had requested.

It’s a rational move for Facebook trying to shape the rules for the new field given its own Oculus deploys motion technologies. The company has also invested in researching the area, for instance, by looking at a device that creates motion on the arm to simulate social gestures like hugging.

The update on Google’s technological development is a temporary distraction from the giant’s more questionable, revenue-driven moves in recent months, including a massive data leak on Google+ followed by the closure of the online ghost town, its failure to crack down on child porn and its controversial plan to re-enter China reportedly with a censored search engine.

Jaguar invents car doors that open automatically as you approach

Jaguar has announced what it calls the ultimate car door. The new door can open automatically as the driver approaches and can be operated by gesture control. The door is currently a prototype and is being tested on a Range Rover Sport. The tech uses motion sensors and the existing keyless entry technology to detect the driver as they approach … Continue reading

Roku's free movie and TV channel is adding premium subscriptions

The Roku Channel has become a hit by offering free movies and TV shows. Now, Roku is taking the next logical step by adding premium subscriptions for 25 providers, including Showtime, EPIX and Starz. Starting late in January, Roku users will be able…

Lovot companion robot

While we live in an increasingly connected world with so many ways to hook up with different people, you might be surprised to find out that more and more people than ever before are suffering from the malaise of loneliness. Suicide rates are up in developed countries, and one can be surrounded by family and friends and yet feel detached from it all. GROOVE X hopes that those who find it difficult to build a bridge of friendship or to love someone else will be able to overcome such obstacles with their all new companion robot known as Lovot.

Adhering to the sage advice that “A little love can change the world”, the Lovot is touted to be a home robot that will stir up the owner’s instinct to love. I suppose another way of doing so would be to obtain a pet, but then again a pet has its other drawbacks such as having to care and maintain it, clean and bathe it regularly, pick up after its poo, and sending it to the vet for its annual check-up or vaccination. Not so with a robot like the Lobot though, which will arrive loaded with advanced technology including Emotional Robotics.

Being sold as a set of 2 units, the Lovot will also feature touch sensors that are located throughout its body, in addition to a six-layered eye display, making it far different from conventional robots that are normally found in modern day households. The Lovot might not vacuum your home when you are not around, but it will definitely beg for attention and get in your way and with those who live under the same roof. When it sees people that it does not know, it will shy away from them. Meant to provide owners with a sense of relief and contentment, the Lovot hopes that owners will learn to touch and hug it in order to feel the joy of loving something.

Expect the Lovot to begin shipping in the fall or winter season next year, so if you are still lonely between now and then, perhaps it would be wise to seek out a counselor or close companion with whom you can share your life and struggles with.

Press Release
[ Lovot companion robot copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]

Russian Researcher Successfully Prints Living Tissue While In Space

3D printing has been used in the medical industry before, where we have seen the tech used to 3D print cartilage and skull implants. Now it seems that Russian researcher Oleg Kononenko has successfully managed to 3D print living tissue, but here’s the kicker: not only is Kononenko a researcher, but he is a cosmonaut as well, and this 3D printing was actually done in space.

Using a 3D printer created by medical company Invitro, Kononenko was successful in 3D printing human cartilage tissue and a roden thyroid gland. Like we said, 3D printing of human cartilage has been done before, but the goal of this experiment was to see how microgravity in space can affect the development of living tissues and organs, especially if there are plans for more human space travel in the future, and if we are planning to eventually one day move to Mars.

This experiment was supposed to have been started back in October, but unfortunately the Soyuz MS-10 spacecraft that carried the bioprinter suffered from a booster failure, forcing the crew to abort the mission. The cosmonauts on board managed to escape without incident, but unfortunately the bioprinter was damaged.

NASA is expected to begin conducting their own bioprinting efforts in space starting in 2019, but for now it seems that Russia has managed to claim the title of “first”.

Russian Researcher Successfully Prints Living Tissue While In Space , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.

Bathrooms Equipped with Brass Instruments Instead of Sinks and Urinals

If you have a flair for the musical and want to redo your bathroom, you might want to do what this guy did. This is Redditor marc_urzz’s step-uncle’s bathroom. The highlight of the space is the tuba he repurposed as the sink.

If you think this is unique, here’s a shot of three tenor horns that were converted into urinals by someone else. It’s too bad these aren’t all in the same bathroom. I personally want to take a dump in a trumpet, but so far my lack of bathroom instruments have not made this possible. When you have a brass band bathroom, taking a poop is like smooth jazz and you’ll feel like Pewey Armstrong… or Deuce Ellington. Okay, I’ll stop.

If you know someone who has a bathroom like this, never put an instrument to your lips when offered one. You don’t know where it’s been. Well, in this case, you have a pretty good idea I guess.

[via Boing Boing via Geekologie]

The New Horizons probe buzzes the most distant object ever encountered first thing tomorrow

Four billion miles from Earth, the New Horizons probe that recently sent such lovely pictures of Pluto is drawing near to the most distant object mankind has ever come close to: Ultima Thule, a mysterious rock deep in the Kuiper belt. The historic rendezvous takes place early tomorrow morning.

This is an encounter nearly 30 years in the making, if you count back to the mission’s beginnings in 1989, but it’s also been some 13 years since launch — the timing and nature of which was calculated to give the probe this opportunity after it had completed its primary mission.

New Horizons arrived at Pluto in the summer of 2015, and in its fleeting passage took thousands of photos and readings that scientists are still poring over. It taught us many things about the distant dwarf planet, but by the time it took its extraordinary parting shots of Pluto’s atmosphere, the team was already thinking about its next destination.

Given the craft’s extreme speed and the incredibly distant setting for its first mission, the options for what to investigate were limited — if you can call the billions of objects floating in the Kuiper Belt “limited.”

In fact the next destination had been chosen during a search undertaken in concert with the Hubble Space Telescope team back in 2014. Ground-based reconnaissance wasn’t exact enough, and the New Horizons had to convince Hubble’s operators basically to dedicate to their cause two weeks of the satellite’s time on short notice. After an initial rejection and “some high-stakes backroom maneuvering,” as Principal Investigator Alan Stern describes it in his book about the mission, the team made it happen, and Hubble data identified several potential targets.

Ultima Thule as first detected by New Horizons’ LORRI imager.

2014 MU69 is a rock of unknown (but probably weird) shape about 20 miles across, floating in the belt about a billion miles from Pluto. But soon it would be known by another name.

“Ultima Thule,” Stern told me in an interview onstage at Disrupt SF in September. “This is an ancient building block of planets like Pluto, formed 4 billion years ago; it’s been out there in this deep freeze, almost in absolute zero the whole time. It’s a time capsule.”

At the time, he and the team had just gotten visual confirmation of the target, though nothing more than a twinkle in the distance. He was leaving immediately after our talk to go run flyby simulations with the team.

“I’m super excited,” he told me. “That will be the most distant exploration of any world in the history of not just spaceflight, but in the history of human exploration. I don’t think anybody will top that for a long time.”

The Voyagers are the farthest human-made objects, sure, but they’ve been flying through empty space for decades. New Horizons is out here meeting strange objects in an asteroid belt. Good luck putting together another mission like that in less than a few decades.

In the time I’ve taken to write this post, New Horizons has gone from almost exactly 600,000 kilometers away from Ultima Thule to less than 538,000 (and by this you shall know my velocity) — so it’ll be there quite soon. Just about 10 hours out, making it very early morning Eastern time on New Year’s Day.

Even then, however, that’s just when New Horizons will actually encounter the object — we won’t know until the signal it sends at the speed of light arrives here on Earth 12 hours later. Pluto is far!

The first data back will confirm the telemetry and basic success of the flyby. It will also begin sending images back as soon as possible, and while it’s possible that we’ll have fabulous pictures of the object by the afternoon, it depends a great deal on how things go during the encounter. At the latest we’ll see some by the next day; media briefings are planned for January 2 and 3 for this purpose.

Once those images start flowing in, though, they may be even better in a way than those we got of Pluto. If all goes well, they’ll be capturing photos at a resolution of 35 meters per pixel, more than twice as good as the 70-80 m/px we got of Pluto. Note that these will only come later, after some basic shots confirming the flyby went as planned and allowing the team to better sort through the raw data coming in.

“You should know that that these stretch-goal observations are risky,” wrote Stern in a post on the mission’s page, “requiring us to know exactly where both Ultima and New Horizons are as they pass one another at over 32,000 mph in the darkness of the Kuiper Belt… But with risk comes reward, and we would rather try than not try to get these, and that is what we will do.”

NASA public relations and other staff are still affected by the federal shutdown, but the New Horizons team will be covering the signal acquisition and first data live anyway; follow the mission on Twitter or check in to the NASA Live stream tomorrow morning at 7 AM Pacific time for the whole program. The schedule and lots of links can be found here.

Epic Games app store is solving the right problem the wrong way

Epic Games is making rounds in headlines lately and not just because of games it publishes. It ended 2018 with some great news for gamers but bad news for Apple and Google. Actually, it’s bad news just for Google really. While it did not give out specifics, it reiterated what the game developer had already alluded to before. Its Epic … Continue reading

Google wins FCC approval to keep developing radar-based hand sensor

Google’s Advanced Technology and Projects (ATAP) team has been working on Project Soli since 2015. The gesture-based system uses broad beam radar to detect and capture hand movements, turning them into commands for mobile devices. Until now, though,…

Andrew Cuomo Rages Against Trump In Ellis Island Inauguration Speech

“This is the harbor where Frederick Trump arrived from Germany and whose grandson would become president.”