Sensor Hubs Arrive for Android

PORTLAND, Ore. — The first sensor hub specifically designed for Android running on ARM was demonstrated today by Hillcrest Laboratories Inc., of Rockville, Md., at the ARM TechCon Expo (Oct. 30-31, Santa Clara, Calif.). Hillcrest's first sensor hub -- dubbed SH-1 -- is compatible with the Android 4.3 "Jelly Bean" operating system and is available either as software-only or pre-integrated with an Amtel low-power microcontroller.

Chad Lucien, senior vice president of sales and marketing for Hillcrest Labs, told EETimes:

There is a lot of activity with sensor hubs in the Windows 8 market. Also Samsung's smartphones and tablets all use sensor hubs, and now Apple has its own M7 sensor-hub microcontroller for iOS. Consequently we are seeing very strong interest among Android developers to catch up in sensor hubs. Our SR-1 lets Android developers quickly implement a sensor hub that does unique things, which go beyond just nine-axis sensor fusion, allowing our OEMs to differentiate themselves with gesture recognition and always-on context awareness functions.

Hillcrest's first Sensor Hub (SH-1) featuring its Freespace sensor fusion, gesture recognition, and context-aware algorithms comes pre-integrated with Atmel's SAM D20 ARM Cortex M0+ based microcontroller.

(Source: Hillcrest)