Google’s Upcoming Advanced Radar May Read Users’ Body Language Without Camera

It seems creepy that a device can monitor your activities and anticipate your upcoming actions. This has mostly been a practice that has been followed using the camera. However, now it is going to be done without a camera and tech giant Google is reportedly working on a system that will record and analyze the users’ movement and behavior without using any camera.

Google ATAP (Google’s Advanced Technology & Projects) has indicated the potential of using radio and similar technologies in order to detect people’s actions, orientation, and the significance of their movement and interactions. The company is said to be working on the mentioned technology, as per reported by 9To5Google.

ATAP group of Google has announced its research project on Tuesday in which it has majorly focused on the non-verbal interactions with the radar system. Citing a documentary from Google ATAP, the report by 9To5Google has mentioned that the researchers have stated their plans of using a mesh network of Soli Radars that they are planning to install inside devices like Google Nest in order to detect the movement of humans around or near the device.

The motive of the system would be making the device use radar in order to create awareness, monitor the surroundings to observe the changes, and generate instructions that will tell what the user wants the device to do next. Although, this is not the first time that the tech giant is exploring such technology.

Earlier, in Google Pixel 4 the company provides the users with Soli Radar which is a tiny chip in the smartphone that is capable of detecting hand movements, motions, and gestures, making the user interaction easier with the device even without having the user touch the device. It uses soli radar for tasks like snoozing alarms, pausing music, taking screenshots, etc.

Such radar sensors working along with AI (Artificial Intelligence), help devices understand the social context of the movements in the space around them and take further actions based on the same. This seems to be having a significant level of privacy as it will not use the camera and due to this, it will not be possible for it to take pictures for the purpose of identifying the body language.

This anticipated upcoming technology will be utilizing the device’s observing area as the personal space (term used by the researchers) which means that understanding movements will include that it will also observe when somebody is entering and exiting the personal space of the device.