A ‘smart-tracking display’ may sound like something you can come up with when you take technology buzzwords out of a hat, but it’s the latest rumor from Google about the ever-reliable 9to5Google. Earlier this week, a new Nest product hit the FCC with Project Soli on board, and after a bit of digging, 9to5’s sources now say it’s for a new Nest Hub smartwatch with sleep detection. I think the idea here is an alarm clock on the bed that will scan you with radar waves while you sleep.
The support for Project Soli unveiled in the FCC submission is a small radar chip developed by Google internally for gesture observation. The slide has been in development by Google’s ATAP group for at least six years now and is not yet commercially successful. The original promise was that Soli would be able to detect fine finger movements such as the virtual tapping of a knob or the turning of a knob, but the commercial models have never approached this level of fidelity. Soli debuted on the Pixel 4, where he could only detect large hand movements, and it was enough of a failure that it did not come out on the Pixel 5. The chip is currently in the new Nest thermostat, but it only replaces the old motion sensor and apparently offers no new features or improved features.
Google’s partners aroused the idea of a smart Google Assistant as a wake-up call, especially in the Lenovo Smart Clock, but Google itself did not create one. Some of Google’s smart screens contain cameras for video calls and face ID, but it’s easy to think that consumers do not want to put a camera in the bedroom. With the Soli radar, Google can track user movements without seeing the gruesome details. Google’s Google smart screens and speakers use ultrasound sonar for basic presence detection, but it’s possible that Soli could provide more confidence.
The aerial movements of Project Soli saved for the Pixel 4 look like it would be a little more useful on a smart screen than a phone. The Pixel 4 can detect an arm wave to skip music or a flat hand to stop an alarm. This was not particularly helpful, as a phone is almost always on your side, offering a more accurate touch screen that is probably within reach, but what about a smart screen? Since a smart screen is visible from across the room and is something you do not take with you, you are more likely to communicate with it from a distance. If the Nest Hub version of Soli has a variety, some form of content wave management may be helpful.
It’s not clear why consumers want Google to follow their sleep patterns. Sleep tracking was mostly the realm of fitness trackers and smartwatches, and Google is not really competing in those areas anymore. Google has a smartwatch platform, Wear OS, but it’s basically dead. The last major update to Wear OS was in 2018, and Google recently killed the closest thing Wear OS had to a killer app, Google Fit’s weight training. Google is currently working to clean up its Fitbit acquisition with regulators, but Fitbit is also not a portable winner. It was an early developer of the fitness tracking trend, but its market share has plummeted to single digits now that competitors are popping up, with companies like Xiaomi taking the lowest point and Apple the highest point. If Google cannot do sleep tracking through a viable fitness platform, I think a smart alarm clock is the next best thing.
9to5Google says that “the new Nest Hub with Soli is coming this year”, and “we are told that it will arrive sooner rather than later.” The website also notes that the FCC filing that began its investigation has a confidentiality request that will expire in July, so we’ll probably hear more about the product before then.