At the Globalpress Summit Conference in Santa Cruz this week, Kionix, the MEMS sensor specialist which is a subsidiary of Rohm, introduced a software tool called Gesture Designer which can be used in handheld devices to sense gestures.
"Content developers struggle to define a gesture library that can be applied to all applications and all users; they are eager for tools that will help them understand motion sensing," said Eric Eisenhut, Kionix Vice President for Sales and Marketing. "Gesture Designer provides a user-friendly environment for the creation, evaluation, and implementation of motion-based gestures for such applications as intuitive user interface and interactive gaming."
The tool is a library of code from which user-specific, gesture-based commands can be created and managed. A gesture-based command is a recording of the data that results from the movement of an accelerometer during a gesture event. Once authenticated by the onboard recognition engine and subsequently stored, this unique command can be used to execute an operation.
Tools like this will allow mobile electronics vendors to enhance their SDKs with capabilities that include greater access to embedded sensors, the ability to interpret sensor outputs, and, ultimately, the ability to customise the use of this information for specific applications or end-user characteristics.