The Challenge of Text Input
We first talked about Project Soli last June. The idea of detecting and recognizing gestures with miniaturized radars represents a whole range of possibilities in the development of mobile devices and wearables. Google's original demo showed several actions under Soli's control, but engineer Alex Bravo published a brief demo of SoliType, which lets you type in the air effectively.
The Input Problem
Data entry remains one of the greatest challenges that all mobile device manufacturers must face. Touchscreens have their limits, and a return to physical keyboards on smartphones is very unlikely. Add to this the growth of accessories like smartwatches and other wearables, with a minimal number of buttons and very compact designs. Voice recognition can't be used everywhere, so gesture recognition is emerging as a more relevant alternative. Mid last year, Google's ATAP group presented Project Soli, a recognition platform based on mini-radars, and quietly, the Mountain View giant began shipping the first developer kits.
SoliType in Action
Fortunately, we can already see the first results. Engineer Alex Bravo posted a 26-second video on Google Plus sharing SoliType, a system that combines a smartphone with a Soli module to write in the air, without the intervention of a physical keyboard. Bravo has been designing one-handed keyboards for a while, and much of his material is available on YouTube, but SoliType demonstrates the capability of gesture recognition for fast data entry.
A Matter of Habit
There's no doubt that SoliType and its variants will require serious training from the user, and that may be their biggest weakness. The gestures are intuitive, but I think nobody is willing to learn ten or fifteen different gestures to input text. Maybe I'm wrong (after all, I'll die hugging my Model M) and other projects similar to Soli will explode on the market, but I see it as very difficult to replace the traditional keyboard. What do you think?
