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Sensing Force-Based Gestures on the Pixel 4

Wednesday, June 24, 2020

Posted by Philip Quinn and Wenxin Feng, Research Scientists, Android UXsoftfirmrecent update to the Pixel 4Touch Sensor Technology and Finger Biomechanicsdrive electrodesense electrodedielectriccell

Left: A finger interacts with a touch sensor cell by ‘stealing’ charge from the projected field around two electrodes. Right: A capacitive touch sensor is constructed from rows and columns of electrodes, separated by a dielectric. The electrodes overlap at cells, where capacitance is measured.

Slowed touch sensor recordings of a user tapping (left), pressing (middle), and scrolling (right).

per se

Touch sensor signals are saturated around the centre of the finger’s contact, but fall off at the edges. This allows us to sense small deformations in the finger’s contact shape caused by changes in the finger’s force.

Machine Learning for Touch Interactionpress gestureconvolutionalrecurrentTensorFlow Lite

An overview of the classification model’s architecture.

User Experience Integrationpress

A user long pressing (left) and firmly pressing (right) on a launcher icon.

GestureDetectorViewMotionEvent classificationAcknowledgementsThis project is a collaborative effort between the Android UX, Pixel software, and Android framework teams.