Sony has never made as big a splash with its motion sensing technology (Sixaxis and DualShock 3 controllers) as has Nintendo with the Wiimote and Nunchuck. That’s not to say that Sony’s given up on the concept — far from it as recent patent applications show.

The new device, as envisionedrent a car bulgaria in the patent application, combines three different mechanisms for tracking motion:
* Accelerometers in the controller itself
* Video tracking (via the Playstation Eye cam), potentially offering face or gesture tracking
* Ultrasonic tracking to further provide an absolute tracking mechanism (using an array of microphones)

The new system is modular, meaning that the controller itself can “break apart” and be reconfigured in different formats for different games.

Of course this is still at the patent application stage now, but its obvious that Sony’s still firmly in the motion control camp.

A group of French companies and research institutes have announced a new effort to develop standards for BAN — Body Area Networks.

The ARN BANET project includes 9 companies and academic institutions united to develop miniaturized wireless networking components designed for medical and sports-related devices like pacemakers or motion-tracking devices.

According to the press release, BANET is attempting to define the following:

BANET project aims at completing essential gaps and shortcomings of the
body area network state-of-the-art, by providing:

- a precise knowledge of the wireless BAN propagation channel in a wide
set of configurations which includes antenna design aspects ;

- a thorough justification of an air interface and MAC protocol choice
able to tackle essential requirements in radio link availability, bit
rate, power consumption, quality of service ;

- a study on coexistence of a BAN network in an environment made of other
BAN networks and other wireless systems ;

- a study of advantages brought by the coordination of BAN networks and
by the use of diversity on the body ;
The BANET project will also take into account the regulatory rules when
using radio devices around the body or as implants, which are essential in
terms of radio spectrum and biological issues.

The group intends to submit its findings to the IEEE 802 group for incorporation into international networking standards.

The bottom line here is that these types of networks are a key to the success of many motion-sensing applications — particularly in applications (like motion sensors used for athletic training monitoring or for rehab applications) where existing networking protocols like Wi-Fi or Bluetooth are too power intensive or don’t provide adequate data rates. We’ll be watching this effort closely — too many vendors are “stuck” using proprietary wireless systems today, which is holding back development of new applications of the technology.

Yesterday we asked : what other unexpected motion-based apps will people come up with that just aren’t on the map today?

Today’s news brought a great example: software that determines when a mobile phone is being used in a car and which diverts incoming calls to voicemail and “holds” incoming text messages until the phone (and the car, presumably) is no longer moving.

We should disclaim that this is an app based on GPS built into phones and not on accelerometers, but it’s still a great example of a unique way of leveraging motion (in a macro rather than micro sense in this case) to build intelligence and presence into applications.

The company behind it , Aegis Mobility, is positioning the product as a safety enhancer (there’s even tie-ins with insurance companies) and as a personal assistant that “knows” what you’re doing (driving a car) and routes your communications accordingly.

We think that a lot more can be made of such applications — using a combination of motion sensing and GPS-based location awareness and even the camera built into phones to provide intelligent apps with some situational awareness — knowing where you are, what you’re doing (or what your movements indicate you’re doing) and even what you can see (through the camera’s lens) to provide greatly enhanced navigation, location-based services and presence-dependent services.

One of the most exciting parts of tracking the motion-enabled market is discovering new uses and applications for the technology that are just completely unexpected. As motion sensing moves to become a ubiquitous part of many devices (PCs, phones, gaming consoles, toys , etc.) people are mashing up applications that have nothing to do with the original reasons the technology was embedded in a device.

A great example was highlighted in the Economist a week or two ago — a new distributed computing effort out of Stanford that leverages the hard drive protecting Sudden Motion Sensor accelerometers in laptops as part of a distributed earthquake tracking system.

Quake-Catcher Network is:

a collaborative initiative for developing the world’s largest, low-cost strong-motion seismic network by utilizing sensors in and attached to internet-connected computers.

With your help, the Quake-Catcher Network can provide better understanding of earthquakes, give early warning to schools, emergency response systems, and others. The Quake-Catcher Network also provides educational software designed to help teach about earthquakes and earthquake hazards

There are PC and Mac clients (as well as a desktop client designed for use with USB accelerometer dongles — mainly designed for science classrooms). There’s a lot of variability to account for (locations can’t be precisely determined without GPS, laptops shake when they’re typed upon and are often moved or placed on non-level/stead surfaces like, well, laps), but the system is designed with algorithms which will filter out these factors and provide a new set of data for tracking earthquakes.

We think this is a really cool app, but, more importantly, it makes us wonder — what’s next? There are literally millions of laptops out there with Sudden Motion Sensors — and now there are millions (and potentially billions) of mobile phones with accelerometers that can be combined with precise GPS and network-based location information and persistent 3G network connections. There are probably a lot of “next big things” just waiting to appear. Have some ideas? Let us know!

We were privileged to contribute a piece to the EE Times this week on how the MEMS and motion sensing revolutions are heading everywhere in the home and in consumer apps in general.

You can read the article here.

And an unsolicited plug — if you’re interested in the business behind the technologies that make motion apps work, you should definitely be an EE Times reader — they spend a lot of time covering the components end of this business. We certainly read it every day.

USA Today has a good piece up today about the coming ubiquity of motion sensing accelerometers in consumer gear.

A lot of the focus (as is the case in many similar articles) is on the iPhone (and iPod Touch) — a large number of the apps being launched in the iTunes App Store are using the accelerometer, and it’s no longer just games.

An interested startup (new to us) mentioned in the article was Fitbit. Fitbit’s $99 motion sensor is designed to track a user’s motion throughout the day (and night) to track exercise, calories burned and even how well some sleeps. Pretty cool stuff and something we’ll be digging into in the near future.

We wrote about Kodak’s Theatre HD media player back in July, and noted that there was a limited amount of discussion about the device’s motion sensing interface.

Hillcrest Labs has since announced that it is supplying the underlying technology for Kodak’s box. This is the first consumer electronics deployment for Hillcrest’s HōME platform, and the first announced customer for Hillcrest’s HRK (HōME Reference Kit). We’ll have more details and a hands on as soon as Kodak releases the Theatre HD box.

In2Games, the UK-based gaming motion controller manufacturer released photos and more information about their Gametrak Freedom, the company’s forthcoming motion controllers for Playstation 3 and Xbox 360.

In2Games has already launched a similar controller for the PS2, but is moving its development efforts to the current platforms.

While Microsoft and Sony have yet to make any big moves forward on motion control, and while Nintendo continues to gain mind- and marketshare with the Wii, it’s good to see the aftermarket bringing full motion control to the other major platforms.

gametrak-freedomjpg

Well, probably not, but it may be an interesting supplement.

BBC has an interesting article up about developments in Japan using ultrasound as an interface device for gaming and other devices.

According to the article, researchers at the University of Tokyo are experimenting with ultrasonic fields as a haptic input device, combining ultrasound emitters with a visual tracking camera to provide users with a ‘feel” of the objects that they’re manipulating onscreen. It’s still early days for the technology, but it’s an interesting way of providing haptics in a controller that go way beyond the simple “rumble” found in today’s systems and without requiring special gloves or other hardware.

Definitely worth keeping an eye on!

Kodak announced their new Kodak Theater HD Player on Friday. In many ways this new product seems to line up as a “me too” in the digital media player ecosystem — support for 720p HDMI output, photo sharing, music sharing, etc. It does have a nice lineup of partners for content (including Kodak’s own photo sharing, Flickr, YouTube and RadioTime), but not enough to make it stand out from the Apple TVs, Roku NetFlix boxes and Vudus of the world.

What is new and different however, is the remote control. Kodak isn’t too forthcoming with the details, saying only:

Just point and play—the unique pointer remote makes it simple to navigate menus
Breakthrough user interface designed specifically for an HDTV

But the inference is clear — the system uses a motion sensing “pointer” remote to interact with the system’s onscreen interface. No more clumsy up/down/left/right D-pad maneuvers to get to your content - a clear winner in our book.