Many of us can vouch for smartphone navigation being something of a battery hog. Sony would like us to navigate relatively guilt-free: its D5600 and flash-equipped D5601 chips chew no more than 10mW of power for everything they do. Most of their peers demand more than that just for the RF side of the equation, Sony says. They also won't lean on outside help for their location fix. Both chips talk to GPS, GLONASS and similar systems, but they further share the increasingly common ability to use an accelerometer, gyroscope and magnetometer to get a more reliable position lock. Don't expect thrifty GPS just yet, when Sony ships the basic D5600 in June and D5601 in September; that doesn't even include the time spent to build a phone or tablet around either of the new parts. We'll be patient if they reduce that anxiety over battery life whenever we're getting directions.
Filed under: Cellphones, GPS, Tablets, Sony
Source: Sony
In-car GPS developers have long had to wrestle with the urban canyon effect that blocks or bounces signals downtown: they often have to make best guesses for accuracy when they can't count on cellular or WiFi triangulation to pick up the slack, like a smartphone would. The Universidad Carlos III de Madrid has nonetheless found a way to borrow a page from mobile devices to get that accuracy back. By supplementing the GPS data with accelerometers and gyroscopes, researchers can use direction changes and speed to fill in the blanks, improving accuracy from a crude-at-best 49 feet to between 3 and 7 feet. The University's creation doesn't just minimize the chance of a wrong turn; it could be key to intelligent or driverless cars that have to perform sudden maneuvers all on their own. While the enhanced system is just a prototype without a commercialization schedule, it already slots into just about any car, including the University's own intelligent car prototype (not pictured here). We may no longer have to lump car GPS units into the same "close is good enough" category as horseshoes and hand grenades.
[Image credit: Steve Jurvetson, Flickr]
Filed under: GPS, Transportation
Via: BBC
Source: Universidad Carlos III de Madrid
We’re seeing more and more tiny Bluetooth devices that are good at keeping track of useful information, such as your heart rate, electric consumption or the whereabouts of your wallet. The DropTag on the other hand tracks a closely guarded secret: whether or not a delivery package was mishandled before it got to its recipient.
Invented by Cambridge Consultants, the DropTag has an accelerometer that can sense, track and relay if the package was dropped or vigorously shaken. As you’ll see in the video below, it will work with mobile apps that could interpret the data in a simple way – it’ll just say if your package is in good or bad condition – as well as display more detailed graphs and timelines.
Cambridge Consultants is also looking at adding more sensors – such as one that measures temperature – to the DropTag to increase its functionality. But the company is also adamant in keeping its final price down, both for ordinary folks like you and me and for enterprise users, which is why they want to make the DropTag to last for weeks on a single coin-cell battery and be reusable. Delivery guys may have met their match.
[via Cambridge Consultants via OhGizmo!]
Many of us have had the misfortune of receiving a package that has been roughhoused in transit, and we might not have even realized it until we burrowed through the cardboard and tape. Cambridge Consultants' upcoming DropTag might just serve as the insurance we need. The badge can detect a drop or other violent motion, like earlier sensors, but carries Bluetooth 4.0 to transmit data and alerts in real-time to a mobile app, whether it's on the courier's smartphone or a tablet at home. As one watch-grade battery could power the sensor for weeks, we could know whether the box took a tumble at the warehouse or at the door -- a help not just for customers wanting their items intact, but for companies that can avoid delivering already-broken goods. At less than $2 in raw costs, DropTags would be cheap enough to slap on many packages. We just need Cambridge to line up clients to make this a reality and, just possibly, prevent a few overly hasty couriers from long-bombing our orders.
Filed under: Misc
Source: Cambridge Consultants
When we think of full-body motion capture, we most often associate it with movie-grade equipment that demands a dedicated room, odd-looking suits and a corporate bank account to finance it all. Xsens hints that we may not have to rent a professional studio (or stand in front of a Kinect) to get complete body tracking for personal use. It's planning to show a wearable, 3D-capable tracking system at CES that uses "consumer grade" MEMS sensors to monitor joint positions and movement -- in other words, the kind of technology that might go into a phone's accelerometer, just strapped to our arms and legs. Further details are scarce, although Xsens is pressing for uses in everything from fitness to gaming. We'd like to see partners line up so that there's a product we can buy in a store. Until then, we'll have to make do with the company's skateboard-dominated teaser clip, which you can find after the break.
Filed under: Gaming, Wearables
Source: Xsens
If you're one of the more daring (or foolhardy) photographers out there, you've tried camera tossing: hurling your camera into the air in the hopes that a timed shot will catch either a unique perspective or an artistic spin. Nikon might not want to stop those shooters from throwing caution to the wind, but its recently published Japanese patent would at least keep those throws to a minimum. Cameras based on the patent could use a built-in accelerometer not just for timing the shot, but to brace for a fall by covering the lens and retracting its barrel on the way down. In theory, the photographer gets a perfect aerial portrait without all the guesswork and a minimum of damage. Call us skeptical that we'll ever see the patent reach a shipping product, though -- even if it was limited to rugged cameras, a mode built almost exclusively around voiding the warranty probably wouldn't sit well with Nikon's accountants.
[Image credit: Zoli B, Flickr]
Nikon patent would perfect the art of camera tossing, protect us from our folly originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 23 Oct 2012 04:21:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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With the spate of bad publicity surrounding all those Kickstarter projects that never make it beyond the funding stage, there's a certain surreality to actually holding a crowd-funded device in your hands. But here it is, the Node, a project we highlighted in its infancy, way back in February. The whole thing blew way past its funding goal, scoring $76,000 out of a requested $50,000. And now, roughly eight months later, the product has been shipped out to enthusiastic supporters all over the place, inside an unassuming white box. Since its inception, the Node's been an interesting (if not particularly easy to explain) proposition. Now that we've got our hands on one, not all that much has changed -- which is to say, in its early stages, there's a lot of potential, but its still a bit of a hard sell.
Hardware-wise, the Node's a solid proposition -- the size and shape of a roll of quarters. The body is made of a white plastic, with Node logos indented on either side. Next to one, you'll find a micro-USB port for charging, and by the other, you get the power button, which also serves to turn on the flashlight module. Inside the body, you've got the battery (which should give you 12 to 14 hours with Bluetooth on), an accelerometer, magnetometer and gyroscope.
Continue reading Node modular iOS sensor hands-on
Node modular iOS sensor hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 20 Oct 2012 19:56:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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