Motion tracking devices have made some major strides in the last couple of years, and now InvenSense, a provider of motion tracking technology, announced this week the availability of its MotionFit System Developers Kit (SDK). This promises to help accelerate design and commercialization of wearable sensor devices for the growing fitness and remote health monitoring markets.
And while this is big news it comes ina small package, as the SKD consists of a small 40mm x 37mm development board incorporating the InvenSense MPU-9150 single chip 9-axis MotionTracking device, a pressure sensor for altitude tracking, a TI MSP430 microcontroller with external serial flash for data logging, a 110mA/hr rechargeable battery, and communication via USB or Bluetooth interfaces enabling real-time streaming of data to smartphones.
Additionally, the SDK also includes Embedded MotionApps Lite software that handles all complexities of 9-axis sensor calibration and sensor fusion providing access to calibrated raw sensor data as well as fused outputs such as 3-D orientation enabling developers to focus on the differentiating features of their application. Key sensor processing tasks are offloaded to the MPU-9150’s embedded Digital Motion Processor (DMP) allowing the total solution to function on small, low cost 16-bit microcontrollers. A demonstration of the SDK will be shown at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona from February 27 through March 1 in Hall 7 at booth 7F24.
And while the package may be small, the market is growing as ABI Research predicted last summer that the market for wearable sensing devices will exceed 100 million units annually by 2016. Wireless will likely lead the way as wireless connectivity will enable wearable sensors to become a must-have accessory to smartphones allowing for streaming of real-time data to mobile devices or the cloud.
The MotionFit SDK is available for purchase this week from the InvenSense website for $149. The associated Embedded MotionApps Lite software is available for download to registered developers on the InvenSense Developer Corner website. For those in this market, this is the time to get moving.