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by aidenn0 2338 days ago
It's a directional transceiver. Directional transceivers happen to be usable as radar, but these were not intended for that usecase: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WirelessHD
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Whatever happened to that Google millimeter radar project to allow devices to see your hand positions? It ended up in the Pixel 4 as Motion Sense, but all it does is let you make swiping gestures in the vicinity of the phone. There should be more useful applications for that technology.
It's not limited to Google. For example, this TI mmWave sensor (http://www.ti.com/product/IWR6843) has an associated reference design for gesture control (http://www.ti.com/tool/TIDEP-01013).

(Disclaimer: I've never actually used that chip or reference design and have no idea how well it actually works in practice. I just think it's really neat that mmWave radar chips are readily available at very affordable price points.)

The last application I saw was using micro Doppler signal recognition to determine if someone has fallen down. Consider a nursing home or hospital bathroom where cameras would be considered intrusive.