so if you walked into a store in the 1990s and asked for a motion sensor
they'd probably hand you some contraption that you hang on your garage
that automatically lights up to scare away a novice burglar or that Bloody
raccoon that keeps tipping over your garbage can but while sensors that
detect the motion of something else are still a main stay of home security
systems the subject of today's video is actually the sensors that detect their
own motion so how do those work let's
start with the kind you've probably got a couple of in your hand or pocket right
now a micro electromechanical system or
mems for short a couple of examples of which are accelerometers and gyroscopes
well that sounds pretty fancy Lonas what the heck are those well they're both
engineering and Manufacturing marbles
but the basic concepts behind them are actually pretty simple accelerometers
are for movement of your device and the kind you'd find in your phone or a game
console SL motion controller is pretty much a very small Mass suspended by like
tiny micro Springs with some fixed electrodes within a housing so let's say
shake it off starts playing and you're frantically going like this trying to
shuffle your playlist the Mass's position relative to the electrodes will
change thanks to inertia changing the capacitance between those electrodes
which your phone interprets as a shake and suddenly you're listening to some
even more deeply embarrassing song you've had on your phone so long you
forgot it was there gyroscopes serve a
similar purpose but because they are not
suspended by Springs and therefore affected by gravity they are more useful
for measuring rotation although a good accelerometer
can do a reasonable job of this unless it's in freef Fall as well so these bad
boys have shown up alongside accelerometers to improve input speed
and accuracy we Motion Plus anyone oops
Red Shell but consider the following
these types of devices are limited in that they can only detect a change in
position relative to a starting point
what if you wanted to know exactly where your smartphone was last night then
you'll need something that can detect absolute position like a light detection
motion controller the place that you're most likely to find one in your house
being on your video game console the original Wii used infrared or IR light
emitters two of them on a little bar under your TV and cameras in each of the
controllers to pinpoint the exact location of the controller in the room
to further enhance the motion control
experience the disadvantage of a light
based system is that breaking the line of sight makes them stop working
entirely and without high frame rate cameras performance can be a little
laggy and uninspired iring but fortunately we've made a lot of progress
since 2006 and newer systems like the one found on the HTC Vive head-mounted
VR device use a combination of mem's
chips laser position sensors and passive
base stations called lighthouses that work with the camera on the headset
itself to perfectly determine the user's orientation and position within the room
pretty freaking Smurf but the applications of these Technologies go
Way Beyond gaming of course with medical Rehabilitation Fitness and Sport
performance tracking and even augmented reality devices like Microsoft's Hollow
lens that overlays virtual objects on the real world you live in unlocking all
kinds of amazing possibilities in the future speaking of amazing Futures what
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the way another use for motion sensors is you know Fitness tracking doing
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think that's pretty much it like the video if you liked it dislike it if you
thought it sucked leave a comment if you have suggestions for future fast as possible and as always don't forget to
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