Single code base is now independent of sensor components, microprocessor instruction sets, system architecture and underlying operating system; relieving customers’ product support burdens
San Jose, California, July 17, 2012 –Sensor Platforms Inc announced today that its FreeMotion™ library of software algorithms and middleware now supports all major mobile microprocessors, in addition to previously announced support for all sensors used in smartphones and tablets
These supported microprocessors include:
- 32-bit embedded processors such as ARM’s Cortex-M, Atmel’s AVR and Freescale’s ColdFire families used as sensor hubs;
- and 64-bit application processors such as Intel’s Atom, nVidia’s Tegra, Qualcomm’s Snapdragon, and TI’s OMAP processors used in smartphones and tablets.
Furthermore, the Library uses the same code base whether it is implemented as a software module running on an application processor, or as firmware embedded in a sensor hub. OEMs find the unified code base minimizes their verification and support efforts across their product offerings, which often include different hardware architectures.
This independence from processor instruction set and hardware architecture is a natural extension to Sensor Platforms’ recently announced ability to work with all accelerometers, magnetometers, gyroscopes and barometers now on the market, from such leading vendors as Aichi Steel, AKM, Bosch, Freescale, Honeywell, InvenSense, Kionix, MEMSIC, ST Microelectronics and Yamaha.
By supporting a full suite of processors and sensors now, the FreeMotion Library allows mobile device designers and application developers to improve product performance and reduce platform fragmentation, while providing sourcing independence, maintaining sensor calibration, and optimizing power consumption to prolong battery life.
- Enabling alternate sourcing to provide uniform user experience: The library assures best-in-class sensor fusion across the entire suite of alternative sensors and microprocessors on the market, so that users always receive the best available information, independent of the anomalies of any individual device;
- Maintaining sensor calibration: The FreeMotion Library is built on an architecture that supports reliable sampling, and ongoing cross-calibration and magnetic anomaly mitigation to assure reliable sensor information for application developers and end users;
- Conserving power: The FreeMotion Library includes proprietary algorithms to optimize battery life by providing, among other things, the industry’s only automatic gyroscope throttle. The architecture is power conscious at its core, thus allowing longer battery life.
According to Ian Chen, Executive Vice President of Sensor Platforms, “We’re delighted at winning widespread and rapid customer acceptance of our FreeMotion Library. Like others in the industry, we pay a lot of attention to creating algorithms, but we go beyond that to address platform considerations that are critical to building foundations on which multiple consumer mobile devices can run.
“Delivering platform software means, in part, that we consider the variations not only in sensor components, but the design skews in our customers’ portfolios, the variations in their manufacturing process, and the diverse user environments that can impact overall performance. We accommodate the variations in our platform software so that adopting sensors does not become burdensome for our customers.
“Sensor Platforms will continue to extend its platform software to process and interpret sensor data, thus allowing new classes of applications to improve user interaction by understanding user contexts and intents.“
The SDK for the FreeMotion Library is available now from Sensor Platforms: [email protected], or 408.850.9350.
About Sensor Platforms (www.sensorplatforms.com)
Sensor Platforms is a venture-financed company located in Silicon Valley that licenses algorithmic software and platforms that enable mobile consumer applications to better serve the users.
The company’s FreeMotion™ library provides the sophisticated intelligence needed to combine and process data from various sensors and microprocessors installed in smartphones and tablets, in order to interpret the users’ movements and situations, and infer their intents.
The library makes it easy for device OEMs to purchase their sensors and microprocessors from multiple suppliers without damaging user experience. It also automatically optimizes sensor and platform power consumption based on user movement and contexts, to enable longer battery life.
To create the breadth of the FreeMotion library, the company has assembled a multi-disciplinary engineering team with proven track records in control systems, machine learning, mixed signal design, motion kinematics, real-time systems, semiconductor device physics, and signal processing.
The company is located at 2860 Zanker Road, #210, San Jose, CA 95134. For information:[email protected], or 408.850.9350.