Straight out of Google’s ATAP (Advanced Technology and Projects Group) comes Soli, a brand new sensing device that uses radar to track movement in real-time. The technology is small enough to fit in a wearable device, and can identify movement and gestures, bringing the type of Minority Report-style interfaces a little bit closer to reality.
One of the most interesting uses of the Soli sensor is as a musical instrument, which is precisely what three academics have created, figuring out how to use the system for musical interaction. You can check it out in the video above.
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You can see how, simply by moving the hand, a user is able to create a variety of sounds. Some are decidedly electronic-sounding, while others closely replicate the noise of organs and string instruments.
The device in this video, unfortunately, isn’t available for sale at the moment. It’s just a prototype created for a research paper, which is worth reading if you want to find out how this project came about came about.
That’s a shame, because I’d love to see what someone like Brian Eno, Olafur Arnalds, or Philip Glass would do with it. I bet it’d be pretty memorable.