Sensor fusion solution designed for consumer handheld devices

The global market for Bluetooth and other wireless handheld controllers is expanding rapidly with more than 500 million RF devices expected to ship in 2022.

New advancements in low power inertial sensors and Bluetooth Low Energy along with the MotionEngine Air sensor fusion software yields sub-milliamp level power draw for the whole system. This enables the proliferation of precise, interactive and intuitive motion-control for always-on and always-aware user experiences.

MotionEngine Air software is production-ready and optimised for use in embedded devices with key features including:

• Precise pointing, gesture and motion control algorithms: cursor for point-and-click control of an onscreen UI; gestures such as flick, shake, tap, tilt, rotate, or circle for intuitive UI controls; 6-axis sensor fusion enabling 3D motion tracking for gaming and VR; and motion events such as pick-up, flip and stability detector to enable power savings
• Patented orientation compensation and adaptive tremor removal, required for a consistent and intuitive user experience
• Pre-qualified for use with sensors from inertial sensor suppliers
• Comprehensive software stack with host drivers and sensor management to streamline software integration with widely used operating systems including Android, Windows, MacOS and Linux
• Arm Cortex-M based evaluation board and related firmware

MotionEngine Air software is a highly flexible, low power and small memory footprint solution that can run on a variety of processors, including Arm Cortex-M, RISC-V and CEVA-BX and CEVA-TeakLite families of DSPs. It can be delivered in multiple configurations - including a full-featured solution that requires an accelerometer plus gyroscope (IMU) and a gesture and motion event-based solution that requires only an accelerometer.

Chad Lucien, Vice President and General Manager of the Sensor Fusion Business Unit at CEVA, commented: “The Hillcrest Labs MotionEngine Air solution combines the most compelling features we’ve created in the 15 years since we pioneered the use of MEMS inertial sensors in remote controls. This new product makes it possible for OEM’s and ODM’s to easily integrate the software into an off-the-shelf RF SoC or MCU to run directly on a battery-powered controller. This opens the door for many different mobile, PC, TV, AR/VR, game and enterprise peripherals to use precise motion controls to enhance a wide variety of user experiences.”

CEVA will demonstrate its MotionEngine Air software and evaluation board during CES 2020 at its hospitality suite in the Westgate Hotel.