PNI Sensor Debuts Newest Sensor Fusion Coprocessor, SENtral-A2

MEMS Executive Congress -- PNI Sensor Corp. today introduced the newest member of its sensor fusion product family: SENtral®-A2, a tiny ultra-low power coprocessor that offers the most expansive algorithm feature set and development framework of any product of its kind. Freeing designers from the burden of algorithm creation, SENtral-A2 gives wearables and smartphone designers a faster way to give consumers more personalized, contextual experiences with their devices.

"The real 'magic' in wearables and smartphones stems not only from their embedded sensors but from the sensor fusion algorithms that intelligently manage the data output from those sensors to create meaningful user experiences. The challenge for product designers is to make such experiences possible without having to build sensor fusion algorithms from scratch. It's simply too time-consuming," said Becky Oh, president and CEO, PNI Sensor Corp. "Our newest sensor fusion coprocessor, SENtral-A2, comes embedded with even more built-in functions such as FFT, filters and a context framework that jumpstarts the development of context, activity and gesture algorithms. For example, designers can use our framework to develop a swimming application that recognizes different strokes or a personal coaching application that helps keep you motivated when you're doing push-ups or sit-ups."

SENtral-A2 Features

• Algorithm Context Framework -- enables customer-specific feature extraction for activity, context and gesture, speeding design-to-delivery of new applications
• Support for Google CTS (Compatibility Test Suite) -- SENtral-A2 successfully runs Google CTS, the test suite that guarantees Google Android apps will run on a mobile device
• Standard Algorithms Embedded in SENtral-A2
  • 9-axis Sensor Fusion
  • Game Rotation Vector
  • Geomagnetic Rotation Vector
  • Glance Gesture
  • Gravity
  • Linear Acceleration
  • Pick Up Gesture
  • Significant Motion
  • Step Counter
  • Step Detector
  • Tilt Detector
  • Wake Gesture
  • Context: Walk, Jog, Run, Still
  • Context: Bike, Vehicle
  • Context: Tilting
  • Shake Gesture
  • Turnover Gesture
• Optional Algorithms
  • Activity Monitoring
    • Push-up
    • Sit-up
    • Sleep States: waking, light, deep
    • Heart Rate Monitoring (HRM)
  • Device Orientation and Motion
    • How the device is held or carried: ear, handheld-in-front, handheld-at-side, in-pocket
    • Auto-detection of wrist-worn vs. not wrist-worn
  • Environmental
    • Touch, Proximity, Light
• More On-board Memory -- allows designers to add more algorithms and batch more data
• Small Size -- a 1.7mm x 1.7mm chip, SENtral-A2 is pin-compatible with earlier versions of SENtral
• Ultra-low Power -- routinely runs over 140,000 floating point operations per second at ~200 µAmps average current consumption at 1.8V

For More Information

SENtral-A2 will begin sampling from PNI Sensor in December 2015. It supports all current versions of Android. For more information, please visit: http://www.pnicorp.com/products/sentral-a or email: [email protected].

Source: http://www.pnicorp.com/