Focused on enabling the next wave in personal electronic devices, Sensor Platforms has introduced its location-aware, personal electronics business to US and international press and industry analysts. Sensor Platforms is a fabless semiconductor company whose proprietary technology extends the reach of personal electronic devices beyond personal computers and Web-enabled handsets to solutions that interact with their surroundings.
The corporation combines sensor control algorithms and advanced heuristics with precision analog/mixed signal CMOS designs to enable new features and productivity for personal electronics. Target markets include free-space pointing, indoor navigation, and vibration cancellation for hard disk drives.
Sensor Platforms has assembled leaders in the fields of accelerometers, micro-magnetometers, algorithms and precision analog technology to address the rich opportunities opening up as the demand for location awareness and motion sensing grows exponentially.
Natural motion interface opportunities
Providers of both conventional and Internet media must compete for consumers' attention (and dollars) by offering quality content, easy-to-use interfaces and a more immediate, even tactile, user experience. The limitation of an up-down-left-right arrow keypad on a living room remote show the need for an interface which is intuitive, economical and low power.
A natural motion interface is a pointing device that allows a viewer to manipulate images on a TV screen by moving a pointer freely in 3-dimensional space, doing for the TV even more than the mouse did in 2-dimensions for the personal computer.
"Consumers have expressed interest in a natural motion interface that is both intuitive and offers far more freedom and ease of use than up/down/right/left keypads or scroll wheels", said Bill Eichen, CEO of Sensor Platforms. "Current implementations are both power hungry and difficult to control. This presents a large market opportunity for Sensor Platforms."
The Sensor Platforms benefits include the use of inexpensive, commodity sensor elements, including accelerometers and magnetometers, and provide a seamless, easy to use interface requiring only by AA batteries.
Indoor Position Tracking Opportunities
Over 200 million location aware-enabled handsets and personal navigation devices (PNDs) will ship in 2009, for such applications as indoor navigation, child monitoring/security, car finders and social networking. Indoor position tracking is a natural extension to the prevalence of the GPS-enabled devices.
Tracking movement indoors is like tracking the position of a free-space pointer, but on a larger scale. The company plans to leverage its natural motion interface know-how to a wide range of indoor tracking applications.
