Is the XWand the Revolutionary Xbox 360 Controller?

It appears Nintendo and Sony aren't the only industry leaders working on a true 3D controller. Microsoft has a working proto type for the "XWand". This interesting device seems to serve a more general audience with applications for more of an everyday use.

Here is a quote from the Microsoft Research site that explains the technology:

"The XWand is a novel wireless sensor package that enables styles of natural interaction with intelligent environments. For example, a user may point the wand at a device and control it using simple gestures. The XWand system leverages the intelligence of the ubiquitous computing environment to best determine the user's intention.

Work on the XWand can be divided into two broad categories: the design of the hardware device, and the design of the user experience and software system that uses the hardware device. Prototypes of both halves of the system have been developed.

Hardware device

The XWand hardware device includes a custom printed circuit board (PCB) with a variety of off-the-shelf sensors, including a 3-axis magnetometer, a 2-axis MEMS accelerometer, and a 1-axis piezoelectric gyroscope. The output of these sensors is collected and formatted by an onboard PIC microcontroller and passed to a 418MHz FM transceiver. A base station (not shown) receives data packets from the wand at about 50Hz, and passes the sensor readings to the host PC via RS-232. The wand also has 2 visible LEDs for feedback, a pushbutton for user input, and two IR LEDs for position tracking.

The magnetometer and accelerometer readings may be combined on the host side to obtain the true 3d orientation of the wand with respect to the room.

The IR LEDs support 3d tracking via external cameras. The PIC is programmed to flash the IR LEDs at a predefined rate, such that simple image processing software on the host PC can recover the 2d position of the wand in each camera view. This 2d information from multiple cameras is combined to find the 3d position of the IR LEDs.

The RF part on the wand may send as well as receive data. Presently the wand uses a call/response protocol, in which the host PC sends a request for data, and the wand sends a data packet back. The bi-directional aspect allows for sending commands from the host to the wand to, for example, turn the on-board LEDs on and off, and it allows for multiple wands to share the same frequency."

Now it remains to be seen if they impliment this kind of technology with gaming, but it is interesting to see that each of the 3 contenders have some ideads that are nearly identical. Call it the creative community consciousness.

» left by Jon Smith

from Work 3 years 16 days ago.

Yes, We all want Wii features for the xbox, users need other interactive games, why buy Wii?

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