Motion Sensors as Fast As Possible
Techquickie
·Techquickie
·2016-05-06
·
864 words · ~4 min read
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so if you walked into a store in the 1990s and asked for a motion sensor
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they'd probably hand you some contraption that you hang on your garage
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that automatically lights up to scare away a novice burglar or that Bloody
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raccoon that keeps tipping over your garbage can but while sensors that
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detect the motion of something else are still a main stay of home security
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systems the subject of today's video is actually the sensors that detect their
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own motion so how do those work let's
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start with the kind you've probably got a couple of in your hand or pocket right
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now a micro electromechanical system or
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mems for short a couple of examples of which are accelerometers and gyroscopes
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well that sounds pretty fancy Lonas what the heck are those well they're both
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engineering and Manufacturing marbles
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but the basic concepts behind them are actually pretty simple accelerometers
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are for movement of your device and the kind you'd find in your phone or a game
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console SL motion controller is pretty much a very small Mass suspended by like
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tiny micro Springs with some fixed electrodes within a housing so let's say
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shake it off starts playing and you're frantically going like this trying to
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shuffle your playlist the Mass's position relative to the electrodes will
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change thanks to inertia changing the capacitance between those electrodes
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which your phone interprets as a shake and suddenly you're listening to some
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even more deeply embarrassing song you've had on your phone so long you
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forgot it was there gyroscopes serve a
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similar purpose but because they are not
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suspended by Springs and therefore affected by gravity they are more useful
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for measuring rotation although a good accelerometer
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can do a reasonable job of this unless it's in freef Fall as well so these bad
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boys have shown up alongside accelerometers to improve input speed
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and accuracy we Motion Plus anyone oops
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Red Shell but consider the following
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these types of devices are limited in that they can only detect a change in
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position relative to a starting point
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what if you wanted to know exactly where your smartphone was last night then
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you'll need something that can detect absolute position like a light detection
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motion controller the place that you're most likely to find one in your house
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being on your video game console the original Wii used infrared or IR light
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emitters two of them on a little bar under your TV and cameras in each of the
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controllers to pinpoint the exact location of the controller in the room
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to further enhance the motion control
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experience the disadvantage of a light
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based system is that breaking the line of sight makes them stop working
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entirely and without high frame rate cameras performance can be a little
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laggy and uninspired iring but fortunately we've made a lot of progress
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since 2006 and newer systems like the one found on the HTC Vive head-mounted
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VR device use a combination of mem's
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chips laser position sensors and passive
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base stations called lighthouses that work with the camera on the headset
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itself to perfectly determine the user's orientation and position within the room
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pretty freaking Smurf but the applications of these Technologies go
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Way Beyond gaming of course with medical Rehabilitation Fitness and Sport
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performance tracking and even augmented reality devices like Microsoft's Hollow
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lens that overlays virtual objects on the real world you live in unlocking all
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kinds of amazing possibilities in the future speaking of amazing Futures what
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if you didn't even have to read books for yourself I guess that's today with
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audible.com the leading provider of audiobooks with more than 180,000
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downloadable titles across all types of literature including fiction non-fiction
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and periodicals audiobooks are great to listen to when you're driving stuck in
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traffic on the subway or the bus doing chores around the house at the gym by
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the way another use for motion sensors is you know Fitness tracking doing
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errand shopping whenever and for our audience members audible is giving a
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free audio book woo as an incentive to
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try out their monthly audiobook service which gives you an Audi book every month
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and further benefits like this counts on other audio books one super hot title
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you might want to check out right now is the Elon Musk biography titled Elon Musk
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creative Ashley Vance uh you guys are going to want to check this out if
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you're into future Technologies and one gentleman who is trying to take them to
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the mainstream so to download that audiobook for free or another one of
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your choice go to audible.com tequ and sign up for the club all right guys I
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think that's pretty much it like the video if you liked it dislike it if you
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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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subscribe and follow and all of that good biz