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ZDNET's key takeaways
- Oura acquired Doublepoint, an AI gestures company.
- The next Oura Ring could get voice and gesture recognition.
- Oura says voice and gestures will power AI wearables.
Oura's latest acquisition suggests the smart ring company could add gestures and voice control to an upcoming wearable. Oura announced on Thursday that it has acquired AI-driven gesture recognition company Doublepoint.
The Helsinki-based Doublepoint designs biometric-based gesture recognition technology used for AR headsets and smartwatches. Oura says the Doublepoint team will be “central” to the design and shipping of Oura's AI-led experiences.
“As we continue to build the next era of Oura, strategic acquisitions play a key role in accelerating our growth and expanding what our devices and platform can do,” said Oura CEO Tom Hale in a press release.
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A brief glance at Doublepoint's gesture recognition kit shows that the company has developed pinch detection using a wrist-worn smartwatch paired with eye-tracking technology in headsets. It's got technology that can detect the exact moment a person pinches their fingers together.
Potential applications for this technology
Oura could use this technology in several ways. It could integrate with smartphones, as Samsung has done with its Galaxy Ring, to take photos by pinching your ring finger and thumb together. It could integrate with smart home devices to control room environments or music by turning your ring finger like a volume dial, as a Doublepoint website demo shows.
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Oura says in a press release that the next phase of wearable AI will be powered by a combination of voice and gestures. Is Oura implying that voice activation could be coming to its next smart ring? The use cases for voice activation on a smart ring are plentiful, including symptom and mood logging, diet tracking, and chatbot initiation. In fact, other smart ring brands, like Luna, are adding voice activation to their product offerings, though the voice activation is initiated by Siri through earbuds or a phone's microphone — not the ring itself.
Rings are becoming the form factor of choice for the next era of AI wearables. There's the Pebble Index 01 and Stream Ring, two wearable note-takers and thought organizers built with microphones that intimately record thoughts and jot down notes in accompanying apps.
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Of course, this is all speculation, and we'll have to wait for an Oura Ring 5 release to see these ideas come to fruition.
