Interacting with our smartphones these days has changed from a few years ago. Back then we relied largely on touch, but now phones with voice assistant features, we can interact with them without having to touch them at all. So wouldn’t it be a possibility that we could also one day be able to interact with our devices through gestures made in the air?
While such technology does exist, they rely on either our phone’s front cameras or infrared which tends to yield false positives or no responses at all. Well the folks at Elliptic Labs have come up with a solution which is to use an ultrasound speaker, 3 mems microphones, and custom software.
Given that most smartphones have more than one microphone, all manufacturers need to do is install the ultrasound speaker and the software. How this works is that the microphones will be listening to echoes made when your hand moves through the air, and from there it will try to determine the gesture you are making.
This technology was demonstrated last year during CEATEC and the good news is that some manufacturers have already adopted the technology, and come 2015, it is expected that the first devices that utilizes Elliptic Labs’ technology will be making their debut.
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