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As an Assistant Professor, I'm teaching Symbian OS at the University of Applied Sciences in Hagenberg, Austria. My company "Mopius" is developing mobile software with a special focus on Symbian OS.

New Concepts for the Acceleration Sensor

mopius | 26 February, 2007 11:43

As the fellow Forum Nokia Champion Arto Holopainen pointed out in his Forum Nokia Blog-posting, the 3D accelerometer in the Nokia 5500 is very useful for detecting if a person falls down. I’d like to introduce two applications that were developed in this winter semester by “Mobile Computing”-students of the University of Applied Sciences in Hagenberg, Austria. Especially the first one is a bit similar to the fall detector, but the idea is situated in an entirely different genre. Both of them show intriguing things of what the 5500 is capable of.


gBoarder

gBoarder records fascinating statistics of your snowboard-trip, like the longest jump or the number of crashes.
gBoarder records fascinating statistics of your snowboard-trip, like the longest jump or the number of crashes.

The idea behind this concept is that the program monitors your movements while you’re going downhill with your snowboard. After your race, gBoarder will display statistics like the number of crashes you’ve had or your longest jump. This is a quite natural usage scenario for the 5500-phone, as it’s a robust sports device.


Like the integrated pedometer-application that comes pre-installed with the device, this is an ideal program that perfectly suits the usage scenario of a mobile phone. As both the sensor and the software are integrated right on your mobile phone, you don’t need any extra equipment. Instead, you just take your mobile phone with you (as always) and it automatically records the statistics. This means that you get an added value out of your phone, with no additional effort.


Also very interesting was the development process of this project. The students recorded the values of the acceleration sensor into a text file and imported the data into a custom MatLab-program. With that, they developed patterns and solutions for recognizing certain distinct acceleration features.


gBoarder was developed by Stefan Damm and Benjamin Gmeiner. Find more information here.


carMeter

CarMeter either displays the current acceleration forces in g, or the tilt of your car.
CarMeter either displays the current acceleration forces in g, or the tilt of your car.

Instead of trying to find patterns in the acceleration sensor measurements, carMeter always displays the current acceleration forces. The setting is compelling: first, put your phone into the mobile phone holder of your car. Upon start-up, the application automatically calibrates according to its 3D-position and then continuously calculates your acceleration forces and displays them in g.


This is very useful to start with, and it’s fun to see how fast you’re accelerating, breaking or turning. Even more important is the additional safety aspect. carMeter monitors the forces and an audiovisual warning will alert you when it’s getting dangerous.


A warning is also implemented for the second off-road mode, which calculates the tilt of your car. If the hill you want to drive on is too steep and the car will most likely not be able to handle it anymore (for current off-road cars, the limit is about 23°), you’ll get a warning as well.


carMeter was developed by Alexander Erifiu, Grammer Mario and Martin Legath. Read more about this project here.



I think both of these applications are great examples of the new ways an acceleration sensor can be used in mobile phones. It’s not just about entertainment, but equally useful for sports and even safety. Many other areas like music would be possible as well, with still seemingly nobody to have taken up the idea of Tommi from the S60 blogs to develop a Star Wars light saber-application.


It’s surprising that so few applications are available for the Nokia 5500. But with all those possibilities, it’d be certainly be very interesting to see this sensor integrated into other, standard smartphones, as this would surely increase the number of available applications that realize all the great ideas!

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Comments

Re: New Concepts for the Acceleration Sensor

coultonp | 26/02/2007, 14:13

coultonp Andreas

We have also done some projects with the 5500 but from our perspective the data output is 3D movement of the phone relative to its xyz not acceleration. Do you apply some signal processing to this or are you using the raw data

Re: New Concepts for the Acceleration Sensor

mopius | 26/02/2007, 15:49

mopius I'm not 100% sure if I understood your question right, but here is one possible answer :)

The acceleration sensor of the Nokia 5500 also picks up the earth gravity. There are some limitations, but you can calculate the acceleration values relative to the user movement in special environments. For the CarMeter-application this means that you have to either put the phone so that it's facing forward (e.g. on the seat beside you) or into a mobile phone holder, or anything inbetween those two absolute positions.

The program can calibrate according to this and get the correct acceleration values with (among others) some matrix multiplications.

However, it isn't possible to turn the phone so that it's diagonally facing to the driver if it's placed in the middle of the car dashboard. It wouldn't be possible that the phone automatically detects its orientation in that case, at least without manual intervention or some obligatory training, like having the user accelerate straight ahead.

The gBoarder-application is searching for special patterns in the raw data stream. E.g. reduced gravity for a short amount of time can indicate a jump, large acceleration forces in special directions a crash, etc.

Did this answer your question?

Re: New Concepts for the Acceleration Sensor

coultonp | 26/02/2007, 16:13

coultonp Andreas

Thanks you have answered the question in respect I understand you are implying acceleartion from the relative motion rather than reading raw acceleration from the sensors.

I thought perhaps you had was a way of changing the output mode of the sensors but It appears as they are fixed as I thought.

Thanks again and I wll blog the project I am working on in couple of days one i have edited the video and you can have a look.

all the best

Re: New Concepts for the Acceleration Sensor

mopius | 26/02/2007, 18:48

mopius Paul,

at least we don't know of anything else either - it seems like it's all about doing some smoothing of the raw values and then using the three acceleration values of the x/y/z-axis for further mathematical calculations.

I'm looking forward to reading about the project! Judging from the other projects you have been working on or have supervised, I'm sure it'll be great!

Best regards,

Re: New Concepts for the Acceleration Sensor

super gears | 15/04/2008, 23:08

Very interesting. As far as the idea is tested in practice?

5500

celix44 | 17/10/2008, 23:23

I will buy 5500 after this article.

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