Example application for accelerometer/gyroscope processing on Android

In the previous parts we have seen how to simulate the gravity vector with the gyroscope if the accelerometer is not able to measure gravity correctly (because it is subject to motion acceleration too beside the gravity acceleration) and how to update this simulated gravity vector from the accelerometer to prevent the accumulation of measurement errors. At the end of the previous post we had a gravity vector which was normally taken from the accelerometer but our algorithm switched to gyroscope simulation automatically when needed.

We need just one more step to enable cool applications and that step is very evident. If you remember my Droidcon 2011 presentation (slide 24), the acceleration measured by the accelerometer is the sum of gravity and motion acceleration. If both are present, they cannot be separated in the general case without additional sensor input. But now we have the gravity acceleration which is reasonably exact even if the accelerometer is subject to motion acceleration too. This means that we can extract the motion acceleration by subtracting the simulated gravity acceleration from the acceleration measured by the accelerometer.

This opens the way for applications based on dynamic movements much like the Wii games with Motion Plus accessory (which actually do the same as the Motion Plus accessory is really just a 2+1 axis gyroscope).

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