Acconeer, Imagimob and OSM Group have released a working prototype of gesture-controlled in-ear headphones. The platform enables customers to bring gesture-controlled in-ear headphones to the market in a short time.
Gesture control is a perfect fit for in-ear headphones, since the earbud is small and not visible to the user, which makes physical buttons difficult to use. With the AOI Touchless In-Ear Headphones, a platform for control of music and calls with simple gestures is now ready for customers to start commercialization projects.
The project combines Imagimob AI SaaS solution and its world-leading expertise in Edge AI with Acconeer’s high-accuracy, low-power radar sensor in a hardware designed and manufactured by OSM Group. Based on this, a prototype with a gesture hit rate of more than 96% and latency less than 500 ms has been developed.
The in-ear headphones embed the Acconeer A1 radar sensor and an AI model by Imagimob with 17 kB RAM & 113 kB flash of memory footprint running on an ultra-low power MCU from STMicroelectronics, the ARM Cortex® M4 based STM32L4. OSM Group built hardware and mechanics to propose an optimized and lightweight solution: only 0.17oz per earbud.
Gesture control and touchless user interfaces has become a hot topic as the pandemic has swept over the world, and the software and hardware platform developed in this project can also be used in a wide range of other electronic devices to implement gesture control. The touchless gesture control market is primarily driven by factors such as rising hygiene consciousness and low maintenance cost. Touchless interfaces in addition to gesture controls are becoming widely popular as they provide the abilities to interact with devices without physically touching them.
The project is part of the strategic innovation program Smarter Electronic Systems – a joint investment by Vinnova, Formas and Swedish Energy Agency.
