Hour 18. Sensing Orientation and Motion

What You’ll Learn in This Hour

• What Core Motion is

• How to determine a device’s orientation

• How to measure tilt and acceleration

• How to measure rotation

The Nintendo Wii introduced motion sensing as an effective input technique for mainstream consumer electronics. Apple applied this technology with great success to the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad. Apple’s devices are equipped with an accelerometer that can be used to determine the orientation, movement, and tilt of the device. With the accelerometer, a user can control applications by simply adjusting the physical orientation of the device and moving it in space. In addition, Apple has introduced a gyroscope to the iDevice lineup (available in iPhone 4 or iPad 2 and later). This enables the device to sense rotation motions that aren’t against the force of gravity. In short, if a user moves a gyroscope-enabled device, there are ways that y....