Rethinking Touch Technology with Doublepoint

In this episode of the CTRL+Listen Podcast, we delve into the future of touch technology with Ohto Pentikäinen, the visionary behind Doublepoint. Discover how Doublepoint is reshaping our digital world, making it more intuitive, personal, and real than ever before.

Listen to the Episode:

Watch the Episode:

Episode Highlights:

• The Mission of Doublepoint
•  Beyond Haptic Feedback
• Gesture Detection Technology
• The Future of Touch Technology

Links and Resources:

Find out more about Doublepoint here

Get in touch with Ohto here

Transcript:

James: This is James from the CTRL+Listen podcast brought to you by Octopart. I'm here with my cohost, Joseph Passmore. Today we're here with Ohto, CEO of Double Point. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Great to have you.

Ohto: Thanks James. Happy to be here.

James: Great. So just for anyone who doesn't know your company, it wasn't familiar with your work, do you wanna tell us a little bit about Double Point? What, what its goals are, what its story is?

Ohto: Sure. Double Point is a gesture detection company founded in 2020. We started off when my CTO, my childhood friend, wanted to build this wristband for a personal tendency that he had. So he's actually trained in classical piano and he built this tendency to type his thoughts in midair, essentially twitching his fingers like that according to 10 finger system. So whenever he would have a thought, you know, just subconsciously he would just start, you know, twi twitching his fingers and he wanted to build a wristband that could detect these different finger twitches and essentially act as a always on keyboard that would log his thoughts and he could return to them kind of whenever, whenever he wanted to. So this tendency basically took him to the lab and he started prototyping with a few different sensors and he built this wristband. And of course there's not a market for people that subconsciously type their thoughts with their fingers. We've met maybe two people during this company's life lifetime who have this similar tendency. So basically just by accident then we stumbled upon augmented reality control and that's how the company got started. So then we started applying this gesture detection technology to AR input.

Joseph: Why is touch so important to the future of interface technology?

Ohto: So if we look at touch, it's, it's, it's very fundamental to humans. So basically we know that we've left the mark on the world by the sense of touch. You know, if, if you imagine that you never felt what you kept in your hands or, or how you interacted with the different objects, real objects around you, it would feel like a mirage. It, you, you saw, you know, the effect, but you wouldn't feel it. So ever since, you know, you know, we can go to the caveman's caveman kind of times when we started using tools with our hands to really know that we've left a mark on the universe. And you know, then of course in digital eras we've seen mice, we've seen keyboards, we've seen touchscreens, all of which do demand touch as a sense, and also a form of input. I mean, it's, it's, we're not reinventing the wheel here. I think it's, it's, it's, it's important today and it will be important in the future as well. So double point is really in the business of taking touch as a, as a, as a sense into this kind of three dimensional world. And that's to say we don't do haptics, but instead we do the other side of touch, which is detecting touch.

James: Just for anyone who isn't familiar with the concepts of a micro gesture, what exactly does that mean?

Ohto: So micro gesture is, it's, it's a subsection or subclass of gestures. So gestures, you know, we of course are very, very fundamental to humans as well. We've used gestures like thumbs up or lifting the middle finger up, you know, for ages to communicate with people around us, not through kind of verbal language or writing, but just using hand gestures. And of course there are some cultures that do it more vividly than others. I come from Finland and, and we're very discreet, so we don't use a lot of hand gestures unless you're kind of angry on the road, if you may. But for us it's micro gestures is a kind of a way of gestures, which for us really means something that is comfortable to use. So something that you would see yourself doing for, you know, several minutes or hours each day. And, and for us, this micro gesture is something that is discreet. So it's not, doesn't intrude other people's kind of everyday life as some larger gestures would, but then they would be enough to feel like you've done something, you, you feel like you've impacted whatever it is that you want to control. So for us, if far for us, it's a matter of finding the, the perfect balance of discomfort and, and discreetness, but also impact when it comes to micro gestures.

James: So it's something that you want to feel natural essentially to a person.

Ohto: Yeah, yeah. It's, it's all about intuition. Like what intuitively feels nice to do, what feels good and, and what feels zero learning curve to learn as well. It's, it's, we can't have something that takes ages to learn because this ideally would be applicable to most if not every human that's gonna be using these technologies in the future. Right.

Joseph: What are some of the possible applications of this technology as it advances?

Ohto: So we kind of look back at the touch screen as being a pivotable pivotal moment for kind of this new plethora of, of interfaces that started with the smartphone. So touchscreens in its current form were first introduced in smartphones, but now when you look around, you see touchscreens on your watch, you see them on your tablet, you see them in your car, you see them in the store counter. So you can sign your name and choose your tip restaurant. Yeah, exactly. So you, you've seen touchscreens go everywhere and, and we think that, you know, and for very different reasons in, in cars, one of the major reasons why we started seeing touchscreens is it's because it's, it's cheaper than dials these analog dials that you had previously. So, so we see that gestures will see a similar type of adoption across where we will see these kind of use cases branch out from augmented reality or virtual reality. As we, as we see today, some of the ones we're very excited about is being able to interact with real objects in your surroundings. So maybe a car, maybe it's your light so you can point at a light in your home and you know, tap it on and then rotate the brightness. You may even, you know, point at your fridge when you want it to open maybe in the future and maybe you wanna turn on your microwave. You know, there's really kind of, there's really no reason why we wouldn't be able to communicate something that's connected to the internet with gestures. It's, it's really a matter of what feels natural for the human. And that's what we're here to enable is this exploration into like how you can make these objects virtual or real part of your everyday environment and use the same controlling mechanism to control everything instead of having, you know, different apps for each device that you have or different remote controllers for each device that you have. So we think there's a kind of a universal way of, of inputting that is accomplishable here.

James: Do you think that what feels natural for humans will, will change as this technology advances?

Ohto: So I think there, something that we see is, is of course humans learn over time, new methods and, and you know, the kids these days, they, they, they learn things that are very difficult for, you know, some adults to pick up nowadays. So we see people being very kind of natural with new technologies in their young ages. And I think that will continue something that feels natural to us today, may feel very old school for people coming a few decades after us. So there is a kind of progression that, you know, is, is that we see happening now, kind of the, however, I I think there are some principles that apply to the human nature on what is natural and it's maybe not a neuroscientist, but a lot of it has to do with like how much delta there is to a previous mental model that you've seen. So if you need to learn, you know, a hundred new gestures, it's very difficult to build a mental model about that which translates over time into other people's consciousness and understanding without having to go through years and years of training. And that's not what we want. So something that's easy to pick up but then just kind of demands you to put it into a sort of mental model that's already in you and and that we see is, is, is a key for the learnability of these new technologies.

James: You mentioned something before that I was actually curious about, which was virtual reality and augmented reality side by side. I was wondering is there any sort of way that they're gonna overlap in the future technology wise? Are they gonna be sort of separate areas that go in diverging different directions?

Ohto: So my mental model for thinking about virtual reality is like thinking about a PC. So a PC is something you have at your home, maybe at your workplace to go about a session specific use case or a target that you may have for something that you may want to do with your pc. So maybe you want to game at your home or maybe you needed to run a sophisticated, the model that you've built for a card that you're designing at your workplace, but it's session specific. So the idea of virtual reality is that it's always, for me it's, it's, it's something that you step into when you want to and how I would compare augmented reality in this context is to a phone. So it's something that you don't necessarily step into as much, but it's something that is always on, always usable and you use it for smaller amounts of time, but throughout the day. And we think that AR and VR kind of can operate in a similar way as, as phones and, and, and PCs work together today. So kind of, there's some information exchange, you can open some of the same apps on each one, you can play some of the same games as well at times on each, but of course there will be some tailoring always. So I would see like a similar setup happening where some of the more intense, more immersive experiences you would do in virtual reality. But then AR is something that comes with you every day and kind of can add some crucial pieces of information when you go about your normal day. So we think that, or I think that they will be kind of highly interconnected but kind of in a way where you may not even notice it.

James: Interesting.

Joseph: Can you tell us about the developer smartwatch? What role is that playing in the development of this tech and is it something you eventually plan to manufacture yourselves?

Ohto: Yes. So if that's referring to the, the, the kit that we're building. So at double point we've built the developer kit and this the need for this arose when, when we started to work on this kind of finger twitching kind of wristband. We actually stopped working on it pretty soon into the company's kind of story because we found that actually a lot of the most important gestures that are key for this kind of intuitive interaction you can detect with sensors that are already on the smartwatch. And mainly we refer to the the IMU, including the accelerometer and the gyroscope, which can detect these kind of finger vibrations that occur when I do a particular intuitive gesture called the pinch. So then we basically built a app that can be founded on the play store for Android watches today, used by tens of thousands of people that kind of, you can make your watch into Bluetooth mouse. And this kind of developer kit that we started building is to make it easier for clients to integrate our algorithms into their devices. So if you're looking into adding this into your product, you may ask what's the battery life needed, what's the computation needed at what sampling rate do you need to, you know, sample the, the sensors at? So this is very difficult to answer through an API that's provided in the watch. So we had to build our own platform to answer some of these questions and this developer kit we're planning to distribute to, to companies that want to see what's the implication of technology like this into their products and help answering some of these questions. So I feel like it's a very important vessel in the in in the integration of these technologies into, into feature platforms.

James: Could you share any specific scenarios or use cases where the technology you're working on demonstrates advantages over traditional input methods?

Ohto: Yes. So of course we need to define what is a traditional input method. Usually we actually don't compete with, well, okay, let's say voice, voice is an input. So some of the very light kind of AR headsets that we see coming out today, they're voice first and voice is, of course, it's, it's great in some scenarios, but if you think about whether you would use Siri to control everything, it's a, it's a bit of a difficult task. Especially, I mean we see it in Finland very well where voice is kind of not necessarily a a, a popular input method on its own, even between humans. So it's like, it does make things kind of quite non-discreet. So you would need to be telling your password, you know, in the, in the wild open you would need to be, you know, sharing your private messages in the wild open. So there is something about being discreet, which is very key for the power of interaction. So in our sense, in, in our case, we would, for example, compare with voice in a way where we are pro able to provide a more discreet way of interacting with their device. Something that is unnoticeable by people around you, which is of course important in, in a lot of environments out there.

Joseph: Why do you believe that wearables are so important and what role will they play in in our future?

Ohto: So wearables for us, they really signify a trend in computers not necessarily being distant and something we go and use, but rather something that can be kind of on us, on can be worn and they provide us key information about us and, and what we are sensing or what they are sensing, but that we're not picking up on our own. Maybe that's related to health, maybe it's related to exercise. A lot of people today use wearables to maybe log an exercise, maybe when they're jogging or playing tennis, maybe they use it to see how well they've slept, maybe how stressed they are, maybe if you should take a day off. So these technology is very good at picking up things that we're not necessarily picking up ourselves. So the role of wearables for us is to really bring the most, bring the most appropriate and the, the the most relevant pieces of digital information into your everyday life without it keep keeping staying two separate. So kind of wearable is just really a way of, of, of making this technology and, and your life more integrated, graded.

James: I know this doesn't really apply to your company right now, but it it does to the, the broader wearables market. What, what role do you see the global electronic supply chain having in, you know, I guess the development speed of wearable technology?

Ohto: So we got started in 2020 and of course we may remember the chip crisis when we saw some slowness in the logistics and the supply chains that seriously affected a lot of companies, but it also affected us. So we were not able to prototype as quickly as lead times for very popular, you know, pieces of equipment just went through the roof. It is, I mean, kind of the world world's supply chain had kind of built itself to a zero warehouse strategy where we weren't kind of not having anything in, in, in the warehouse, but rather just like making sure that that cycle is, is, is as, as quick as possible. And obviously, you know, if there's any concern about whether that supply chain can stand itself, it it becomes a problem because a lot of money will be left on the table. A lot of innovation will end up not happening because we're waiting for parts. So for us it's, it's, it has kind of changed our strategy as well. We kind of stockpile some key components ourselves today, even though we're just a small 13 person startup in Helsinki, Finland. So kind of I'd imagine that if there's any type of interruptions in the feature, which are similar in, in kind of in in how they would impact kind of our ability to innovate it, it it will affect companies probably very badly if, if we see major disruptions. So this is something that, you know, we use to not be mindful of, but we need to be today in order to make sure that we're not seriously blocked by any, any kind of missing parts that we may need for our core core technology.

James:  And on a similar note, how do you see the legislations passed by the EU regarding ethical sourcing and like environmentally friendly manufacturing? How do you see that impacting things in the future in that space?

Ohto: Yeah, so I think this, this legislation, I mean coming, coming from fin fin coming from Finland where a lot of things are kind of regulated, the government does play a big part in, you know, building the society here. We, I I generally like the idea of legislation because it kind of gives a good push towards kind of a collective future where things are better in a sense. So kind of anything I'm not like intimately aware of the legislation myself and all the details related to it, but in a kind of a, a kind of big picture view legislation, which pushes us to also be better. We usually do, you know, we do accommodate with open arms, it's, it's, it's usually good. Of course sometimes legislators have a tendency of let's say not listening to the people that their legislations may affect. So of course that's something that we welcome as well, having this kind of bilateral conversation. But as a general rule of thumb, we, we, we'll we would rather have some legislation than have none at all.

James: Yeah, definitely. It's one of those things as a trade off where it makes your life slightly more difficult but makes the future of humanity that much more sustainable. So

Ohto: Yeah, I think it's, it's, it's, I mean we hold a value system where it's, it's, it's definitely worth us doing that, especially since, not to get into geopolitics too much, but we've seen in Finland some heavy scrutiny over some of the kind of company sourcing parts to our eastern neighbor under the kind of the, the, which is Russia. So I mean, if we had no legislation, people that would, and companies that would be kind of seeking for profit, they would, you know, potentially kind of bite us in the ass because it's, it's, I mean we have a military for good reason, so it's not like we would be very, it would be dumb if we were sourcing a lot of critical military parts to our eastern neighbors right now. So, you know, in a lot of, in a lot of ways it, it does play a crucial part in like how also is here in Finland. 

Joseph: Are there any trends that you've noticed in the wearable space that you're excited about that you could share with us?

Ohto: So personally, I quite like the, the idea of AI in wearables. So we've seen some AI companions, so a few different devices have been coming out lately where you can bring this kind of contextual information into your kind of everyday life. AI has a wonderful kind of, or the current AI methods, maybe language models, maybe image recognition models. They have a wonderful kind of way of, of searching through a lot of information which is sometimes difficult for, for humans. So I find myself kind of in situations where I would benefit from this kind of database that would be available and, and kind of some pretty limited but, but definitely some good analysis tools on that data that I'm seeing or that I'm experiencing. So personally I'm quite excited about how, how AI is becoming more of a thing in, in kind of assistance or wearables kind of that I could be, you know, not only using through a prompt in my computer like chat g bt but rather something that's more readily available in my everyday life.

James:  Fantastic. Well that kind of brings us to the end of what we wanted to ask, but last question is if people want to keep up with the company, check out your technology, see what you're doing, what are the best places to do that?

Ohto: So we're quite active on LinkedIn, on YouTube as a double point and through our website double point.com you can also find our discord where you can find people that are currently pro prototyping new interactions and new use cases for gestures. So if you want to get, see what people are actually coming up with, that's a great place to start. And then we share some of the top ones on, on our YouTube as well. And those places would be, you know, the best to start if you have a a Samsung Galaxy Watch or Google Watch, you can also try our free app that can be downloaded just from the play store and the link to that can also be found on our website, double point.com. So those I would start with.

James: Fantastic. Thank you so much for your time. It's been really fascinating chatting with you.

Ohto: Great, thank you.

James: Yeah. And for anyone listening at home, come back next week and we will have a another guest for you.