The Second-Gen Nest Hub’s Radar May Be Able To Tell When You Fall
Two years before the second generation Nest Hub was unveiled to the world, Google experimented with radar technology called Soli in the Pixel 4 and Pixel 4 XL smartphones. It promptly disappeared the year after, never to return again, until the same radar technology was seen in the second-gen Nest Hub smart display.
Here, the Soli radar is majorly used to track your sleep — or your movement during sleep, to be precise. However, according to a patent filed by Google, the same Soli radar might be put to use to do something a lot more exciting: detecting falls at home.
Since the Nest Hub doesn’t have cameras, it will use its radar paired with machine learning to detect if someone has taken a fall. The smart display will then play an audio prompt to confirm whether a fall truly occurred. If there’s no audio response or if the person speaks and confirms that they fell, the Nest Hub will then be able to reach out to a specific contact or contact emergency services.
The Proposed Fall Detection Looks Set To Be Very Intelligent
Google’s proposed implementation of fall detection on some kind of Nest Hub-like device seems to be very intelligent. The patent says that the Nest Hub could set up a call to the emergency contact instead of just sending a message, as well as alerting other Nest devices in the home, which is perfect if there are people in other parts of the household.
On top of that, considering fall detection is best used for the elderly who live alone, it may also be able to monitor walking pace. The idea is that the slower someone walks, the more likely they are to be feeble and older, and this makes them more likely to suffer a fall. AI will be able to understand the person’s regular walking pace and perhaps apply that to the fall detection model.
Might There Be A New Nest Hub Device On The Horizon?
There’s no sign that Google might have a third-generation of Nest Hub devices in the works. The second-gen display was released in 2021, and its predecessor in 2017. If Google is trying to establish a regular release cycle, it means we should expect a new one in 2025, which might be good timing for the fall detection software to be implemented, but time will tell.
