SFVR 10

Earlier this week, I headed to SFVR #10. I had attended their previous event, that included a Google Tango hackathon, and had a good enough time to want to come back. This event didn’t disappoint. There were a handful of demos that were pretty interesting. A couple games, some hardware accessories like an exercise bike as VR input.

One especially interesting project was a very simple looking demo that showed how a smartphone (or a smartwatch) could be used for very accurate 2d input, using nothing but sound. They use inaudible frequencies, and determine position using the Doppler effect.

Here is a video demo of the technology. (Rehosted in case it gets pulled.)

It’s academic research at the moment, being lead by Lili Qiu. They recently received a grant from the NSF to try to find commercial applications. The project is called “Champion Air Tracker” or CAT, since they intend to eat the mouse.