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The Wii's MEMS Inventor on Future Technology
eldavojohn writes "IEEE Spectrum is running an article on the inventor of the motion sensor that the Wii uses. The microelectromechanical system (MEMS) gives Wii its core ability to sense motion in the controller. What's really interesting is where Benedetto Vigna wants to take this technology. He has plans to make the sensor smaller and tougher, and hope to place it inside of things like shoes, textiles, and medical devices to aid in data collection. He continues, 'Then I want to make a three-dimensional gyroscope, to measure rotation around three different axes. Today, such products are quite big, a cube 10 centimeters on a side. We want to do this in less than a 30-millimeter cube, to serve as an image stabilizer in cameras and to track a person's position in the intervals when he can't get a GPS signal.'"
IIRC, Mario Party comes out this week. That will cause a significant disruption in the american economy, as droves of people stay home and play with their Wiis. Nintendo must space such releases out, in order to safeguard our nation.
Comes in real handy if you are usually drunk when you use your camera. If only they made a camera that would refuse to take pictures that you will regret the next day.