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Article Excerpt
While gyros have been finding high-volume opportunities for use as yaw rate sensors in vehicle stability control systems, cost-effective, reliable, and robust gyros are also carving out expanding opportunities in another high-volume sector-the consumer market.
Low-cost, wireless gyros, which sense angular rotation/motion, have key opportunities for enhancing and invigorating such applications as computer input devices, remote controls/presentation controllers, as well as game controllers, or reality devices. Input devices, presentation devices, game controllers, or various other devices (e.g., cell phones, or PDAs) can become more versatile, easier to use, and provide a richer interactive experience with the user when they are equipped with inertial (gesture-based) sensing and wireless transmission capabilities.
Moreover, the ability of the gyro to sense yaw (rate and direction of turn), as well as pitch or roll, can provide enhanced motion sensing and flexibility, compared to simply using an accelerometer to sense tilt or pitch and roll, in such applications as game controllers computer input devices, virtual reality games, or presentation controllers. Low-cost, compact, rapid-response, robust gyros could, for example, reinvigorate the market for inertial sensors in game controllers.
Gyration(tm) (Saratoga, CA, 800-316-5432/408-255-3016)(www.gyration.com), founded in 1990, is leveraging its patented Motion By Gyration(tm) dual-axis, angular inertial sensing technology and proprietary low-power radio link technology to provide motion-sensing wireless peripherals that allow for intuitive, gesture-based input and control devices for the consumer market, including business communications, personal computers, and home entertainment applications. The company's products (e.g., "in-air" motion-sensing computer mice, keyboards, wireless presentation controllers, wireless media center PC controllers) combine gyro and wireless RF (radio frequency) technologies to streamline and enhance a variety of applications, such as conducting a business presentation, controlling remotely a PC or TV, surfing the Internet, or playing a computer game.
Gyration has three technology patents in the U.S. The company reportedly owns the concept of applying inertial sensors (i.e., gyroscopes or accelerometers) in a product that senses angular human motion in order to control a graphic or cursor on a display (such as a computer monitor or TV screen). In Gyration's patented technology and approach to using any inertial sensor in a product to sense a graphic or cursor on a display, which is trademarked Motion By Gyration, the gyro (which can be readily integrated into input devices, computer mice, or remote controls) senses the angular motion of a user's hand and translates it into cursor movement on the screen.
The gyro technology, combined with Gyration's proprietary RF link, can allow for enhancing varied types...
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