Sensor Platforms enriches consumer experiences by developing and licensing algorithmic software and platforms that allow applications to better understand user motion, context and intent. It is a venture capital financed company located in Silicon Valley.
The company’s brain trust has experience and expertise in sensor physics, advanced algorithms, precision analog/mixed signal design and real-time systems. Our team combines those elements with its proprietary application specific heuristics to produce easy-to-use systems that offer sustainable advantages in their various markets.
Sensor Platforms’ Technology and Market Opportunities
Inexpensive micro-electromechanical (MEMS) sensors have made it possible for mobile electronic devices to become aware of their environments and movements. However, raw sensor data are meaningless to most mobile applications. Interpreting these environmental and motion data into information useable by the consumer requires a confluence of different areas of technical expertise. Sensor Platforms brings together a multi-disciplinary technical staff to create a new class of sensor systems that enables mobile applications to understand the position and motion of their users.
These new applications, including gesture/pointing remote controls, gaming controllers, and location based services on smart phones, offer enriched user experiences and enhance their utility by interpreting the context in which they are used.
FreeMotion™ Remote Controls
A FreeMotion remote control allows a viewer to manipulate objects and menus on a TV screen by moving a remote input device freely in 3-dimensional space; doing for the TV even more than the mouse did in 2-dimensions for the personal computer.
People are drawn to the Internet because of its astonishing variety of content. At the same time, the Internet competes with traditional media outlets including broadcast and cable televisions, DVDs, and video on demand. Many innovations aim to combine the best of TV and the best of the web in one seamless experience but providing the optimal user interface that converges the two paradigm remains a challenge.
Just as it is inconceivable now to imagine using the Internet without a mouse, the limitation of an up-down-left-right arrow keypad for home entertainment systems is an obvious place for improvement. Consumers who want a seamless experience combining the web at the television need an interface that offers more while remaining intuitive to use.
Touch interface in smart phones and tablet computers have successfully gained consumer acceptance. By using gestures and pointing, FreeMotion provides an “air touch” interface to give consumers a familiar interface implemented in a remote control. TV and set top box manufacturers can leverage smart phones and tablet applications to offer additional services on their platforms.
The Sensor Platforms advantages in a FreeMotion interface include the use of inexpensive, commodity sensor elements, including accelerometers and magnetometers. The company’s auto-calibration algorithm continuously adapts to usage environments and provides a seamless interface to its users, all while providing best-in- class battery life.
FreeMotion Library
Sensor Platforms’ FreeMotion technology consists of a library of advanced algorithms and firmware that take commodity sensor data and interpret them into position, motion and contextual information meaningful to application developers. Sensors in the library include accelerometers, barometer, gyroscopes and magnetometers. It is also possible to deploy the library functions in conjunction with ranging beacon references such as WiFi, GPS and cell towers. The library is designed to support motion and gesture based user interfaces, gaming controls, pedestrian location and navigation applications.
An intelligent resource manager collects and aggregates the requirements from active applications, configures available sensors and evokes the necessary library functions to deliver the information requested while optimizing resource consumption and minimizing battery drain. The library is architected so that it can run on a single processor or be distributed among a processor and intelligent sensors. Sensor Platforms can customize the FreeMotion library to specific platforms and applications of our customers.