Blumio continues to move in impressive circles by being an early...

Blumio continues to move in impressive circles by being an early adopter of Google's Ripple open protocol standard for radar, and a step in advancing the use of small sensor radar technology.
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Google has used the opportunity of CES 2022 to launch Ripple, an open standard of protocols for putting radar capabilities into consumer devices. Companies including Ford, Texas Instruments, and blood sensor maker Blumio are already on board.

CES organizer the Consumer Technology Association (CTA) is hosting Ripple for the time being, with the goal to "enable hardware / software interoperability and accelerate the growth of applications for general purpose consumer radar".

Ripple should make it easier for other manufacturers and software developers to get involved, and semiconductor makers Infineon and NXP have also signed up to the project. How long it'll be before we see new devices as a result of Ripple remains to be seen.

"Ripple will unlock helpful innovation that benefits everyone," said Ivan Poupyrev, the Director of Engineering and Technical Projects Lead at Google ATAP. "General purpose radar is a key emerging technology for solving critical use cases in a privacy-respecting way."

The Ripple team suggests potential applications including non-invasive wellness monitoring, occupancy detection in buildings, human activity recognition (for everything from tracking exercise to detecting falls), and touchless gesture controls. As The Verge notes, it could also enable driver assist technologies inside cars.

Most of these features can be offered with cameras and other kinds of sensors, but miniaturized radar offers benefits in terms of speed and accuracy that other approaches can't match. At the moment, radar components are developed on a one-off, bespoke basis, something which Ripple is aiming to change