Sony recently showed a prototype headtracking system (with a display strikingly similar to the one that CMU’s Johnny Lee showed last month). The big breakthrough here, it appears, is that a camera does the tracking, so the user doesn’t need IR glasses (or a sensor bar strapped to their head).

No word on when this will be made available, but we’ll be tracking.

The BBC’s Bill Thompson has a great piece up on Wii hacks and mods — discussing Wii-controlled Roomba vacuums, Mac computers, and the like.

Beyond describing some hacks, the real meat of the article — and a concept with which we strongly agree — is the fact that Nintendo is leaving something on the table by not further opening the Wii platform to new applications. Yes, Nintendo has an independent developer’s program in the works. And obviously the hacker community is doing a LOT with the Wiimote.

But most of the really exciting activity on the Wii platform has come from outside the purviews of any official developer programs. Thomson’s contention — and ours — is that companies like Nintendo are leaving a lot on the table by trying to overly control their platforms. Right now Wii is the standard for motion sensing. But it is limited to gaming (and a few related activities like Web browsing through the console). If Nintendo wants to expand its current lead to the rest of the motion world, they’re going to need to move beyond the console — and a lot of third parties are chomping at the bit to help them get there.

As Thomson says:

Just think what brilliant software we’d have for the Wii by now if Nintendo had said: “here’s a games console. And here are the hardware schematics - go play!

Vtech is pretty widely known for devices like cordless and DECT phones, the company also makes a wide range of electronic games/toys for kids (with big brands like Thomas the Tank Engine in the fold). This week they joined a number of other toy and game manufacturers by announcing their own kid-focused motion sensing console system called V-Motion.

This $69.99 system lets users add games in the form of “smartridges”, and includes network connectivity via USB to unlock game levels, but most importantly includes a wireless motion-sensing controller to let the kids get both a physical and mental workout using the system’s educationally-focused games.

You can see VTech’s (PDF format) press release here.

The 2008 Toy Fair was held in New York this week, and some of the biggest and most most exciting announcements revolved around motion control.

Coming in at the low end of the price scale was JAKKS Pacific who announced their Ulti-Motion Game Sytems:

Ulti-Motion game systems are a new video game concept developed in conjunction with Disney Consumer Products which takes the fun and creativity of interactive play to the next level in a way only Disney can. The new Ulti-Motion™ video game line expands upon JAKKS Pacific’s award-winning Plug It In & Play TV Games technology by combining toys and role play with one of the most popular trends in video gaming: motion games. The Ulti-Motion game system plugs directly into the A/V jacks of any standard TV, and it contains a number of games or activities along with role play accessories. No additional cartridges are needed.

The Ulti-Motion™ Disney® line delivers on Disney’s preschool brand values including education, adventure, music, art and exploration and will feature hit Playhouse Disney™ properties. Titles especially developed for girls inspired by Disney Princess™ and Disney Fairies™ will also be introduced this Fall.

Also slated for launch this Fall is the JAKKS Ulti-Motion™ Swing Zone™ line, featuring an all star, multi-sport title including bowling, tennis, golf, baseball and football.

We saw early demos of this system at CES this year, and they certainly bring motion control down to an even lower entry point in the market.

Next up, and also at a low entry price ($74.99) was Tiger Electronics, who announced their U-DANCE system which forgoes the “dance mat” used by traditional dancing games and instead uses “wireless motion tags” which players attach to their ankles — enabling them to dance anywhere in the room, and to have their motions tracked for more elaborate dancing moves (rather than just measuring footfalls).
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Panasonic held its 2008 Product Showcase last week. One of the featured displays? Wii-proof plasma that can withstand up to 4 Joules of energy in the form of an unexpectedly airborne Wiimote.

Funny, but also an indicator that motion sensing is having a bigger impact than just desperate Wii hunting explorations for those not yet in on the fun!

Read CNET’s article about these new TVs here.

iSuppli released a report this week stating that the motion-enabled Wii console will surpass the Xbox 360 in terms of installed base this year. The Wii has already passed the Xbox 360 and the PS3 in annual sales. According to PC World:

The market researcher chalks up Nintendo’s success to a strategy of offering a lower-cost game console targeted at everyday people, rather than an expensive console with the latest graphics aimed at video game lovers. The main difference between the Wii and its rivals is the wireless controller and sensors that detect hand motion and speed. The innovation puts motion into gaming, because users swing the Wii controller to hit virtual baseballs and golf balls on their TV screens, go bowling and fight in boxing.

Obviously price has something to do with the Wii’s success (being at least $100 less expensive than its competitors), but the broad appeal of easy-to-use games has to be a big factor too.

The annual GSMA Mobile Innovation Global Awards were announced today, and motion control was the big winner with GestureTek taking the top award. GestureTek’s optical sensing motion control system is being widely deployed by mobile operators around the world — notably by NTT DoCoMo in Japan and Verizon here in the U.S.

The judges were clearly impressed by what GestureTek’s motion sensing brings to mobile platforms, stating:

We selected GestureTek as
the overall winner because of the truly innovative interface that we
believe will help exponentially improve the consumer experience on mobile
handsets for menu navigation, content selection, gaming, and other uses in
the future.

We think that this award is pretty significant, as such awards go, because it really does signal a “coming of age” for motion in the mobile world — just as the success of the Wii did in the gaming world.

The press release can be found here.

The motion market will challenge the Internet and television as a way to reach consumers, predicts Mike Ribero, CEO of Reactrix , Redwood City, Calif. “The interface technology is the tail that wags the digital dog,” he says, indicating that his goal is to change that conundrum.

Ribero sees a lot of parallels to the early days of the Internet when people threw printed material up on their web sites because it was the only thing they had.
“I believe we are at the leading edge of the perfect storm in technology,” he says, adding that motion applications will take over as a “final frontier” for out-of-home media, replacing both television and the Internet. “It’s ironic, isn’t it, that the Internet is now seen as a traditional medium,” he says. “But there is a vast extent of real estate that is available to reach the consumer at or near the point of purchase.”

Both interaction and content for this medium are just developing. “With early digital displays, people took the only content they had – content purposed for TV – and put it on displays,” Ribero says. Now he sees the first steps toward creation of content purposely developed for in-store and outdoor use. Reactrix’s WAVEscape is one way of delivering such content.
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We’ve talked in the past about the Wii being leveraged for rehab purposes. Well the trend continues, as CNN notes in a article about “Wiihab”.

The article features several hospitals and rehab units using Wii games (mainly sports) for a variety of rehab and occupational therapy programs. Therapists are finding, according to the article, that the ability of Wii games to get patients “engrossed mentally” helps them overcome the rigors of rehab and physical therapy.

Nothing really new in this article, but a solid example of the mainstreaming of motion applications.

Stacey Higginbotham at GigaOM has an interesting feature out today about the global MEMS market that’s worth a look.

MEMS is, of course, an extremely wide-ranging category within the chip building world, ranging from inkjet printer mechanicals and silicon microphones to microdisplay technologies and RF elements. A big part of this (growing) market is of course the devices that make many motion sensing apps viable — accelerometers and gyroscopes. While the biggest players in the overall MEMS market are focused on some of the “legacy” MEMS apps . For example, HP (inkjet heads) and TI (DLP display technology) are #1 and #2 in MEMS revenues, but two of the top 9 players in the market (ST Micro and Analog Devices) are mainly focused in the accelerometer space.

Yole Developpement, a French MEMS consultancy and analyst group, provided the stats in the GigaOM article — we expect to be bringing you an interview with them soon.