As always Douglas Adams had some keen, if slightly cynical, insight:
"The machine was rather difficult to operate. For years
radios had been operated by means of pressing buttons and turning dials; then as the technology became more sophisticated the controls were made touch-sensitive - you merely had to brush the panels with your fingers; now all you had to do was wave your hand in the general direction of the components and hope. It saved a lot of muscular expenditure of course, but meant that you had to sit infuriatingly still if you wanted to keep listening to the same programme." Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
At Google I/O a couple weeks ago they said they had miniaturized the Soli chip and they demoed a smartwatch with the chip in the wrist band, as well as a gesture-controlled speaker. They announced the Soli beta dev kit coming "next year". You can watch starting around 21:40 here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LO59eN9om4
I'm sure a lot of consumer implementations come to mind pretty quickly for most, but this could be really huge for accessibility... if you could say, train gestures tailored to the very specific nuances of a person's available range of motion. Avoiding the limitations tied to physical hardware would be huge.
It could also be huge for ergonomics. Many people develop RSI issues through repeated keyboard and mouse usage. People have as gone as far as using their nose as an input device:
An unintended result of the advent of reliable/portable touch devices was the reduction in physical hardware input.
Instead of clamping down a joystick to a desk and moving it around with your face... or looking away from content to type on a keyboard with your nose... you can buy an off-the-shelf product and use it on just about any solid surface. The iPad was huge for people with limited limb control.
It'll shift to RSI doing these gestures instead. They're still fine motor control which is what's involved in RSI. Notice how runners don't get RSI in their legs but pianists do.
Background: I have RSI and have battled it for 15 years now. There's a lot that's mental and nervous system, and can easily shift in the body (almost gave myself RSI in my throat and eyes doing voice rec and eye tracking to avoid typing).
That could be interesting, eye tracking is often expensive and can require a "just-right" type of setting. Reducing that barrier can be huge for many.
I think outside of a single solution like eye-tracking there's a lot of room for a device like this to be much more adaptable to a broad range of conditions. There's so much variation of how physical symptoms can present, even within a single disease, that it can be really difficult (and expensive) to customize hardware for an individual... and degenerative diseases can take constant readjustment and new hardware.
The hardware barrier seems endlessly frustrating — you have an off-the-shelf device like a joystick/keyboard/mouse that was originally designed for hands, being used by feet and with mouths...
...a good example of hardware reduction making a meaningful impact was the advent of reliable portable touchscreens — people could actually start directly touching the interface without some of the ergonomic constraints of a mouse and keyboard. You can reliably surf the web on an iPad using your nose. Imagine trying to do the same with an off-the-shelf joystick or mouse.
the physical size of buttons/knobs/sliders requires devices to be large enough to accommodate those elements. with a chip like soli, designers can create devices that are dramatically smaller.
as the soli gets smaller (which future versions likely will), you can imagine tiny devices that maintain rich interactivity.
Exactly. I also prefer physical buttons but imagine what could be done in terms of reducing space taken by controls alone. This is in many ways vastly better than touchscreen interfaces since it will allow for many different kinds of interaction in the same space.
However if you have a button, you have a button. With this you can have a button, or a dial, or a slider or sliders in the other two directions. And which you have switches with the context.
Readit News
http://www.looknohands.me
There are lots of other RSI stories here: https://github.com/melling/ErgonomicNotes/blob/master/README...
An unintended result of the advent of reliable/portable touch devices was the reduction in physical hardware input.
Instead of clamping down a joystick to a desk and moving it around with your face... or looking away from content to type on a keyboard with your nose... you can buy an off-the-shelf product and use it on just about any solid surface. The iPad was huge for people with limited limb control.
Background: I have RSI and have battled it for 15 years now. There's a lot that's mental and nervous system, and can easily shift in the body (almost gave myself RSI in my throat and eyes doing voice rec and eye tracking to avoid typing).
I think outside of a single solution like eye-tracking there's a lot of room for a device like this to be much more adaptable to a broad range of conditions. There's so much variation of how physical symptoms can present, even within a single disease, that it can be really difficult (and expensive) to customize hardware for an individual... and degenerative diseases can take constant readjustment and new hardware.
The hardware barrier seems endlessly frustrating — you have an off-the-shelf device like a joystick/keyboard/mouse that was originally designed for hands, being used by feet and with mouths...
...a good example of hardware reduction making a meaningful impact was the advent of reliable portable touchscreens — people could actually start directly touching the interface without some of the ergonomic constraints of a mouse and keyboard. You can reliably surf the web on an iPad using your nose. Imagine trying to do the same with an off-the-shelf joystick or mouse.
http://www.infineon.com/cms/en/product/promopages/soli/
http://www.infineon.com/dgdl/InfineonGoogleSoliFAQEnglish.pd...
as the soli gets smaller (which future versions likely will), you can imagine tiny devices that maintain rich interactivity.
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