The Signal and the Noise

About this Episode

Dr. Carolina Brum is an HCI expert with a background in music, gesture acquisition and signal processing. As part of Google's ATAP team, she helped create the radar-based gesture input feature for the Pixel 4. Topics of discussion include sensor fusion, AI, digital privacy, and cultural conventions for interpersonal touch.

Dr. Brum runs a consulting company based in Montreal, Canada. She crafts user experiments and algorithms to foster effective interaction with emerging technologies. Carolina has worked on projects involving music, dance, baseball, and helped create in-air gesture control for phones as a part of Google's Project Soli. Her research interests include sensing, algorithms, human motion and gesture analysis, statistical signal processing, interactive objects and environments, and human interaction experiments. Carolina received a Ph.D. from McGill University, where she created a framework for predictive filtering of sensor data. She has a B.S. in Electrical Engineering and a S.M. in Mechanical Engineering. She collaborates with the Input Devices and Music Interaction Laboratory in Canada, the Computer Music Group in Brazil, and the Responsive Environments Group/MIT Media Lab in the US. In and out of her lab, Carolina is always chasing movement.

Episode Links

• Carolina Brum — Personal website of Dr. Brum.
• Google's Project Soli — Project Soli, an effort by Google ATAP (Advanced Technologies and Projects), which resulted in the gestural control feature of the Pixel 4.
• fliprl — Dr. Brum's HCI consultancy.
• Evaluation of Sensor Technologies for the Rulers, a Kalimba-Like Digital Musical Instrument — IEEE paper about gesture analysis and sensor fusion techniques for a digital musical instrument.
• The Rulers — Page describing the Rulers instrument, used by Dr. Brum for gesture modeling.