Google, Ford working to bring consumer radar to more devices: Report

San Francisco, Jan 9 (IANS) Tech giant Google is working with several partners, including Ford, on the Ripple open API standard to "accelerate the growth of applications for general purpose consumer radar".

According to 9To5Gogle, experts from across the silicon, sensing, automotive and electronics industries have come together to develop open and standardised API interfaces for the radar system development.

Standardised API calls for general purpose radar enable interoperability and the rapid deployment of new applications, the report said.

Ripple allows for interoperable software libraries that can "work across various radar hardware implementations, ensuring reusability and easier firmware upgrades".

It comes as radar is "smaller, cheaper, and lower power" than ever, with the open API standard hopefully allowing for a "reduced barrier to entry will lead to new products and services for consumers".

Ripple will enable developers to create specialised extensions so that they can build on the standard to support their own differentiated use cases. These extensions can be incorporated as official interfaces in future versions of the standard, as per the report.

On the Google Pixel 4 and 4 XL, radar proved useful for speeding up face unlock and quick gestures, while it is used for sleep tracking on the Nest Hub, the report said.