Open Source India - Google’s New Spatial Awareness

Some recent announcements have led through how google is going to advance its technology for better comfort and user experience. Google is working towards understanding users’ body language and spatial interaction to perform commands. Imagine your computer playing your favorite playlist when it senses your disinterest in work, or your fridge alerts you before you pick that unhealthy midnight snack. This is what advanced technology by google can do. Many will think we already have cameras to understand and note our actions, but using cameras has a risk of privacy. Google’s Advanced Technology and Projects has decided to work on spatial awareness to recognize any changes that happen around the device and perform commands accordingly.

Google has already done significant work on a similar technology called Soli sensor which uses radar and gets spatial awareness through electromagnetic waves. This technology was first unveiled in Google Pixel 4, in 2015. This device was able to perform basic tasks like pausing the alarm and taking screenshots using simple hand gestures without touching the phone. Google’s Nest Hub Display also uses similar technology to notice moments and breathing to understand sleeping patterns. This new study by ATAP uses Proxemics to understand the personal space of devices. Like human beings have their personal space and they can get a sense of someone entering it, the devices will also have their personal space and any disturbance in their personal space will be noticed by them. So, if a person walks by a device, it will get the idea by sensing the disturbance in their personal space and follow pre-defined commands accordingly. This disturbance in the personal space will be sensed through radar. This radar will not only sense the moments but also the mood and intentions of the person around. All this will be helpful in getting the automatic instructions.

Another add-on to this technology is to sense the path, motion, and direction of a person. Imagine you want to watch your favorite web series while cleaning which requires you to move around the room. This new technology will sense you not being around and can switch off the TV. To deal with such issues, it is important that the technology can understand more than just being around. It should understand the patterns of the motion and the direction in which the motion is taking place. While some tech-savvy are excited about the technology, others are scared of the violation of the personal space and privacy of the users. Let’s see what this new technology buy Google brings and how it impacts society.

FAQs

• Why is spatial awareness important ?

  Spatial awareness is knowing where your body is in space in relation to objects or other people. To have good spatial awareness you also need to understand and respond to a change in position from these objects. This is a complex skill that children develop from an early age.

• Where is spatial awareness in the brain?

  Unlike the monkey brain, spatial awareness in humans is a function largely confined to the right superior temporal cortex, a location topographically reminiscent of that for language on the left.

• What are the new technologies in Google?

  Soli is a new sensing technology that uses miniature radar to understand movement at different scales: from the twist of a finger to the turn of your body.

• What does Nest hub Smart Display do?

  Nest Hub Max automatically senses and matches more than 16 million combinations of light and color in any room, so the photos you display on-screen blend in perfectly with your home decor and adjust to the brightness of the room. Your photos, framed in a whole new light.