A company called Cooper Innovations Group has filed suit in Pennsylvania against Nintendo and Sony over a 1996 patent the company holds relating to Nintendo and Sony’s wireless controllers.  The suit does not cover the motion sensing aspects of the Wiimote, Nunchuck and SIXAXIS controllers (or of the Blu-ray controller for the PS3), but instead covers the communications mechanisms between the remotes and the consoles. Evidently the patent covers mechanisms for each controller’s method of identifying itself to the console — and thereby providing controls on screen for the user holding a particular controller when several are in use.

You can read more about this here and here.

MAR Events page launched

1/15/08 Motion Apps Report launches its Events page. This page can be used to list all upcoming events. Powered by the mBLAST events system @ http://events.mblast.com

Motion Applications Report’s Curt Harler had a chance to speak with ABI Research’s Douglas McEuen about the role of accelerometers in mobile devices. Here’s the results of that conversation:

The single biggest problem facing almost any portable device – whether a laptop, a cell phone, or a GPS unit – is battery life.

Sticking a MEMS accelerometer into a phone, for example, has the potential to reduce battery usage.

“We’re going to see a lot of MEMS accelerometers in small, ultra-low power devices,” says ABI Research senior analyst Douglas McEuen.

There are at least two separate application areas where the cell phone can benefit: battery life and security.

In the first case, McEuen sees a motion sensor being placed into the phone. “It will make the phone smarter, put it in sleep mode quicker,” he says. A cell phone laid horizontally on its face, for example, would sense that it was not being used (one placed right-side up might be sitting there in speaker mode or be on hold). It would power-down right away. Or, the cell phone might sense that it was being held vertically near a person’s ear. At that point, there is no reason to maintain the backlighting of the phone’s screen. Move the phone down for redialing a number and the accelerometer would again sense the motion of the phone and re-illuminate the screen.

Continue Reading �

It seems the optical motion sensing trend we picked up on at CES caught the eye of the mainstream press.

CNN has a piece up today featuring a lot of the same companies we talked about (GestureTek, 3DV and Reactrix), and additionally has some video of a JVC big screen with a motion/gesture sensing control system.

As we look back on this week’s show, we didn’t see a lot of truly revolutionary new hardware at CES — for the most part it was the same old stuff only bigger, smaller, lighter, thinner and/or cheaper. Which made the motion control being shown there really stand out, as manufacturers seem to have reached a bit of a plateau on platforms and general underlying technologies the real battle for differentiation seems to be coming in the realm of interface and applications.

By the way, it wasn’t just the optical players getting attention at CES. Hillcrest Labs had their first public booth showing the “Loop” controller and HōME^™ Interactive Media System to all comers, and Gyration garnered a fair amount of attention with the news of their acquisition into Movea SA. We’ll follow up with stories on these systems shortly.

We had a chance to see several optical (computer vision) motion sensing systems at CES that we found quite interesting.

First up was GestureTek. We’ve talked to (and about) about GestureTek in the past, but this was our first time to see their gear up close and personal. Their mobile motion sensing applications (leveraging mobile phone’s built-in cameras) have had some significant success (NTT Docomo includes GestureTek technology in all of their current high-end phones, and supports over 100 applications), but we were surprised to see the the huge number of other applications the company is supporting beyond the phone.

Our friend (and mobility guru) Russ McGuire dug up one (of many) DoCoMo’s hilarious motion sensing advertisements: look here to see what we’re talking about.

Redwood City, California-based Reactrix was in the Samsung booth showing off their digital signage/advertising system which incorporates a stereo IR motion sensing platform combined with flat panel displays and an EV-DO network backend to provide truly interactive public advertising platforms that can be rapidly deployed in hotels and other public locations. Despite the fact that the Samsung booth was packed tighter than a can of sardines, the system worked impressively well and was able to pick out individuals and track their movements and gestures within a sea of folks gawking at the ultra thin LCDs.
Continue Reading �

Motion Apps developer Hillcrest Labs raised an additional $25 million in their fourth round this week. Alliance Bernstein joined the company’s existing in this round.

Read more here

CNBC’s Tech Check with Jim Goldman has called out two hot stories for CES this year: HD and Motion. (The battle between Blu-ray and HD-DVD is the HD story)

On the motion apps side of the house, he find that the most exciting new story of CES is motion apps vendors who are “going to take Nintendo’s revolutionary concept into new realms beyond the world of gaming”. He names some names here, including Hillcrest Labs and GestureTek.

Read the story here.

On the eve of CES, gyroscopic peripherals manufacturer Gyration was acquired today by Movea SA, a spin-off of the French  research institute CEA-Léti. The newly merged company will be called Movea, Inc.  In the deal, Movea acquires all assets of Gyration, including the company’s patent portfolio.

We’ll bring you more on this as we get it.

Just a quick note prior to CES kicking off:  Logitech’s Cordless Air Mouse (powered by Hillcrest Labs’ Freespace Technology) was a recipient of the iF (International Forum Design) awards.

You can find the press release here.

There is yet another freeware application—to be released at the end of January 2008—from French indie S60 developer Samir, who has already given us two freeware Nokia N95 accelerometer-based applications: NokMote and RotateMe.

Called ShutUp, the app uses the N95’s native accelerometer to disconnect incoming cell phone calls when users flip their phones over. Simply reach into your pocket, turn the device over and continue your conversation without interruption.

All of Samir’s work is freeware…thanks, d00d!