PORTLAND, Ore.—The Freespace MotionEngine has already empowered the smart TV revolution at LG, Roku and Sony by enabling remote controllers to point-and-click on-screen air-mouse style. Now Hillcrest Laboratories Inc. (Rockville, Md.) has repurposed the Freespace MotionEngine for mobile tablets and smartphones running the Android and Windows Phone operating systems.
The new
Freespace MotionEngine for Mobile is on display this week at DESIGN West 2012 in San Jose, Calif., where Hillcrest CEO Chuck Gritton will describe in his presentation entitled "MEMS Integration: Building Immersive Apps & Reaping the Rewards."
According to IHS iSuppli (El Segundo, Calif.), MEMS sensors—accelerometers, gyroscopes and magnetometers (together called inertial measurement units)—rose to 1.5 billion units in 2011, slated to rise as high as 4.2 billion units by 2015. However fusing the separate outputs from these sensors for location-, gesture- and control-applications is a complex software task requiring specialized knowledge. Hillcrest's Freespace MotionEngine simplifies the sensor fusion tasks for original equipment manufacturers with pre-built algorithms that reduce an OEMs time-to-market with an implementation effort essentially reduced to a parameter optimization exercise.
Hillcrest’s new Freespace MotionEngine has already solved these problems for smart TV and game controllers worldwide at LG, Roku, and Sony, but its new Freespace MotionEngine for Mobile has been specifically tasked with repurposing the software fusion problem for OEMs building tablet and smartphones. Typical applications include context awareness, augmented reality, pedestrian navigation, health/fitness, gaming, and complex gesture recognition.
The Freespace MotionEngine for Mobile is designed for Android and Windows 8 smartphones and tablets.