This could eliminate the need for displays from smart devices completely, cutting down costs and power requirements.

Many smart wearables have miniscule screen real estate. How could one possibly control information in devices sporting such tiny screens? Google has an answer for that in the form of Project Soli.

Last year, the search engine giant gave us a glimpse of the roadmap this project could take. Now it has given a front seat view of how radar powered finger gestures could actually control wearables. Google representatives were able to control a LG Urbane smartwatch by simply holding their fingers in front of it. As they moved closer more options opened onto the face of the watch, while as they moved away, the face of the watch returned to its default look. Although it is still work-in-progress at the moment it however provides a means of controlling smart devices with either no screen at all or with tiny screens.

“We’ve developed a vision where the hand is the only controller you need,” said Ivan Poupyrev, a technical program lead at Google’s Advanced Technology and Projects (ATAP) group. “One moment it’s a virtual dial, or slider, or a button.”

If these efforts are successful, Google will be able to create a whole new gestures-driven language for our smart devices.

The initial developer’s kit had a mandatory power warning at the back since the device drew insane amount of power. Developers had to connect the rig to a powerful desktop in order to get it working. However, Google engineers have managed to refine Soli’s design and have reduced its power requirements to a great extent.

From its earlier 1.2 watts, Soli currently draws only 0.054 watts, which effectively means its power requirements have dropped by 22 times. The researchers were even able to make it run on a standard Snapdragon 400 mobile chip and recently even on an Intel Atom Chip. They managed these feats thanks to optimising their code by 256x and still managed an 18,000FPS radar rate.

“If you can make something work on a smartwatch, you can make it run any way you want,” said Poupyrev.

In the earlier design, the Soli chip was mounted on the LG Urbane’s watchband, which gave it a somewhat clunky look. But thanks to some help from LG, they were able to fit the device right below the screen.

What is pretty mind blowing is the fact they Soli can detect even fine gestures such as rubbing of fingers.

The Soli team tried out the tech out the technology in a JBL speaker which made its operations gestures driven. It can light up when someone’s hand draws close to it, and can skip tracks with a simple thumbs-up gesture. This just goes to show how Soli can control smart devices without the need to physically touch them.

Next year sometime, Google is set to roll out the beta version of the Soli developer’s kit. Expect it to look much smaller than what it looks today. Given the neck breaking speed of Google’s progress, this impressive technology could become consumer-grade real soon.