Since 2015, Google has publicly announced the construction of miniature radar chips. Applications include monitoring your sleep status, controlling smartwatches, counting pieces of paper, and letting you play the world's thinnest violin. It's just that Google's Soli chip is not smooth, and the Sales of the Pixel 5 with the first chip is not very good. Now, Google has launched an open-source API standard called Ripple that can be equipped on devices such as cars.
Technically, Ripple is conducted with the support of the Consumer Technology Association (CTA), which is also the industry body that hosts the CES show in Las Vegas every January, but it is Google that really drives the project.
Leading soli, Ivan Poupyrev, head of Google's ATAP team, said: "Ripple will unleash beneficial innovations that benefit everyone. Conventional-use radar is a key emerging technology that addresses critical use cases in a way that respects privacy."
On the Ripple project's GitHub page, there are several mentions of "Copyright 2021 Google LLC", and contributors must sign a Google open source license agreement to participate. (Ripple appears to be a makeover of the "Standard Radar API" that Google quietly proposed a year ago (PDF).)
That doesn't mean Soli might find a new life, though, and the idea that radar has a privacy advantage might make sense. This technology can easily detect if someone is in the scene, nearby, and/or tells their device what to do without the need for a microphone or camera.
Ford told The Verge that in-car radar could become part of its driver assistance technology. Now, the automaker says it's using "advanced external radar" to study these features (which sounds expensive to me). The following is a statement from Ford Company Jim Buczkowski, who is currently in charge of the company's research and advanced engineering teams.
We're looking at how to use internal radar as a source of sensors to enhance a variety of customer experiences, rather than the leading Ford Co-Pilot360 driver assistance technology that uses advanced external radar today. With the involvement of the semiconductor industry, a standard API will allow us to develop software independent of hardware sources and give software teams the freedom to innovate on multiple radar platforms.
![Google released the Ripple open source radar standard, which enhances the perception of cars[fig]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAP///wAAACwAAAAAAQABAAACAkQBADs=)