Cheap Radar Chips Now Let Engineers Build Material Sensors in Software

Gauthier Lechevalier has built a material-sensing radar using signal-processing algorithms applied to commodity 60–77 GHz millimetre-wave chips. Rather than custom antenna hardware, the advance lives in software. This mirrors earlier radar shifts—from Doppler motion detection to gesture recognition—and moves material discrimination from bespoke hardware into prototyping reach for independent engineers.