- Supports Android (Version 2.3 or later), Windows 8, and integration into sensor hubs and smart sensors
- Works with sensors from all leading suppliers
- Context Manager enables smart apps that understands their users
- Resource Manager helps increase system battery life
- Sensor fusion provides improved sensor data fidelity
- Magnetic anomaly mitigation assures accurate compass heading
- Continuous background calibration means no “figure-8s” required
Sensor FusionContext AwareArchitecture
The FreeMotion Library is a software platform that includes advanced algorithms, power conscious architecture, and a high level application programmer interface (API). The Library is optimized for mobile consumer electronic devices and can run in an application processor, a sensor hub, or be distributed over multiple processors. It has been certified to support Android and Windows 8.
The first advantage and the foundation of the FreeMotion Library is its “sensor fusion.” That is an algorithmic technique of combining the outputs from two or more sensors, recording a common event, so that the fused result better captures the event than any single constituent input. Sensor Platforms’ sensor fusion capability combines active sensor power management with best of class ability to mitigate magnetic anomalies.
But while sensor fusion in the FreeMotion Library allows applications to get more reliable information from sensors, it is just a starting point.
The second advantage applications gain from the FreeMotion Library is “context awareness,” which involves another layer of sophisticated algorithms on top of sensor fusion that interprets sensor data to deduce higher-level information. These algorithms distill a context (e.g., “the user is walking”) into a series of characteristic features in sensor data that they can detect. Because different people walk differently, robust context detection must be abstracted over a representative population of users and over different environments, e.g. walking on a treadmill, walking upstairs, walking on a train, etc. All these are accomplished with an architecture that emphasizes low power consumption.
The creation of the FreeMotion Library requires a confluence of skills including expertise in control systems, mobile architecture, human kinematics and behavior, machine learning, sensor device physics, real-time systems, and signal processing. Sensor Platforms then combines those disciplines with its proprietary application-specific heuristics to produce easy-to-use systems that offer sustainable advantages in their various markets.
| Sensor Fusion Delivers | Context Awareness Delivers | |
| Sensor manufacturer | Faster time-to-marketAutomatic calibrationSupport for differentiated hardware | Intelligent power managementContext based differentiation |
| SoC and Platform manufacturer | New features from better integrated sensorsExpanded sensor vendor selections | Context Aware API for smart applicationsContext enabled system management features |
| Mobile device OEM | Engineering efficiencyNew features from better integrated sensorsExpanded sensor vendor selections | New differentiated features and use casesContext Aware API for smart applications |