Alex Olwal, Ph.D.
Research & Engineering Leader / Product Innovation for AI and AR

Human—AI Interaction · Multimodal Interfaces · Augmented Reality · Wearables · Human—Computer Interaction · Accessibility · Interaction Technology · Ubiquitous Computing

Founded and led various teams at Google, including the Interaction Lab; Tech & Society 2024-2025, Augmented Reality 2020-2024, Research 2018-2020, ATAP 2017-2018, Wearables 2015-2017, [x] 2014-2015. Academic research conducted at MIT, Columbia University, University of California, KTH (Royal Institute of Technology), and Microsoft Research, with much appreciated collaborators and contributors at the same or other institutions. Also, thank you Stanford University, Rhode Island School of Design and KTH for the opportunity to teach.

Alex Olwal

Ubiquitous Sensing in Everyday Objects and Devices
Haptics with Input introduces passive and active sensing for the Linear Resonant Actuator (LRA), which is widely used in wearable and mobile devices. We demonstrate new touch and pressure sensing, and how mobile devices can sense which surfaces they are placed on.

Google AI Blog: Haptics with Input ->
Haptics with Input: Back-EMF in Linear Resonant Actuators to Enable Touch, Pressure and Environmental Awareness
Dementyev, A., Olwal, A., and Lyon, R.F.
Proceedings of UIST 2020 (ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology), Virtual Event, Oct 20-23, 2020, pp. 420-429.

UIST 2020
 PDF [3MB]
Zensei: Embedded, Multi-electrode Bioimpedance Sensing for Implicit, Ubiquitous User Recognition
Sato, M., Puri, R., Olwal, A., Ushigome, Y., Franciszkiewicz, L., Chandra, D., Poupyrev, I., and Raskar, R.
Proceedings of CHI 2017 (SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems), Denver, CO, May 6-11, 2017, pp. 3972-3985.

CHI 2017
 PDF [15MB]
SpecTrans: Versatile Material Classification for Interaction with Textureless, Specular and Transparent Surfaces
Sato, M., Yoshida, S., Olwal, A., Shi, B., Hiyama, A., Tanikawa, T., Hirose, M., Raskar, R.
Proceedings of CHI 2015 (SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems), Seoul, South Korea, Apr 18-23, 2015, pp. 2191-2200.

CHI 2015
 PDF [21MB]
SpeckleSense: Fast, Precise, Low-cost and Compact Motion Sensing using Laser Speckle
Zizka, J., Olwal, A., and Raskar, R.
Proceedings of UIST 2011 (ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology), Santa Barbara, CA, Oct 16-19, 2011, pp. 489-498.

UIST 2011
 PDF [4.5MB]
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