Google is bringing its futuristic gesture-sensing radar to actual products

MOUNTAIN VIEW, California -- Google's closer than ever to making Project Soli, its experimental gesture-based radar project, a reality.

During a session at the I/O developer conference Friday, Google's ATAP (Advanced Technology and Products) group showed off two new products that have Project Soli's radar tech embedded in them.

Though both devices are still prototypes, this is the first time we've seen anything resembling a consumer product, and it suggests the technology is moving beyond a moonshot experiment. ATAP's Ivan Poupyrev said Friday they are working to bring the technology to products that consumers will eventually be able to buy.

And the group appears to be closer than ever to achieving that goal. A smartwatch prototype was demoed onstage using an LG watch running Android Wear.

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The watch has Soli's radar tech embedded in the watch band, which allows the watch to detect the gestures used to navigate the interface. The gestures were far more detailed than concepts we've previously seen -- that's thanks to the redesigned chip and algorithims powering Soli, which Google says have helped improve the performance enough to use the chips in consumer products.

Google also showed off a speaker concept, using a Harman JBL speaker, that allows people to control playback using gestures from up to several meters away.

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Though neither product is ready to be released yet, Google has already started to open Project Soli to developers. A small group of developers got their hands on dev kits late last year, and Google gave us an early look at some of the ways it has started to take advantage of the radar tech. 

Google says it will make more announcements about the availability of the next dev kit in fall of this year. 

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