A “smart sleep monitor” sounds like something you could make up if you were buzzing about technology products, but this is the latest rumor about Google’s product on the ever-reliable 9to5Google. Earlier this week, a new Nest product arrived at the FCC with Project Soli on board and, after some research, 9to5 sources now say it is for a new Nest Hub smart monitor with sleep tracking. I think the idea here is a bedside alarm that will scan you with radar waves while you sleep.
The support of Project Soli revealed in the FCC process is a tiny radar chip developed internally by Google for gesture detection. The chip has been in development for at least six years in the Google ATAP group and has not yet achieved commercial success. The original promise was that Soli would be able to detect fine finger movements, such as the virtual touch of a button or the turning of a dial, but commercial models never approached that level of fidelity. Soli debuted on Pixel 4, where he could only detect large hand movements, and it was a failure enough not to reach Pixel 5. The chip is currently in the new Nest thermostat, but it only replaces the old motion sensor and does not appear to provide new features or enhanced features.
Google partners launched the idea of a smart display with Google Assistant as a bedside alarm clock, mainly on the Lenovo Smart Clock, but Google itself did not make one. Some of Google’s smart monitors come with cameras for video calls and facial identification, but it’s easy to imagine consumers hesitating to put a camera in their room. The Soli radar would allow Google to track the user’s movements without seeing the horrible details. Today, Google’s smart monitors and speakers use ultrasonic sonar for some basic presence detection, but it’s possible that Soli could provide greater fidelity.
The aerial gestures of Project Soli that were launched for the Pixel 4 appear to be a little more useful on a smart display than on a phone as well. Pixel 4 can detect an arm wave to skip the song or a flat hand to stop an alarm. They weren’t particularly useful, as a phone is almost always at your side, offering a more accurate touchscreen and probably within reach, but how about a smart display? Since a smart display is visible across the room and is something you don’t carry with you, you are more likely to interact with it from a distance. If the Nest Hub version of Soli has any kind of reach, some form of content control gestures can be useful.
It is unclear why consumers would let Google track their sleep patterns. Sleep tracking has mainly been the domain of fitness trackers and smartwatches, and Google doesn’t really compete in those areas anymore. Google has a smartwatch platform, Wear OS, but it’s basically dead. Wear OS’s last major update was in 2018, and Google recently eliminated the closest thing Wear OS had to a killer app, Google Fit weight training. Google is currently working to release its acquisition of Fitbit with regulators, but Fitbit is also not a wearable winner. It was one of the first to move into the fitness tracking trend, but its market share has dropped to single digits now that competitors have appeared, with companies like Xiaomi taking the lower end and Apple taking the high end. If Google is unable to monitor sleep through a viable fitness platform, I think a smart alarm clock is the second best option.
9to5Google says that “the new Nest Hub with Soli is coming this year” and “we have been told that it will arrive sooner or later”. The site also notes that the FCC filing that initiated the investigation has a confidentiality request that will expire in July, so we’ll probably hear more about the product before that.