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New Japanese Mobile Phones Detect Motion

Posted by Zonk on from the virtual-/wave dept.

GreenTea writes "Some of the latest mobile phones in Japan come with motion sensors that let users detect motion or play action games like those on the Nintendo Wii console. The D904i from NTT DoCoMo, Japan's top mobile carrier, contains a tiny motion sensor that detects shaking and tilting, company spokesman Nobuyuki Hatanaka said. 'The software supports three main types of motion: shake, rock and roll. Shake can be used for actions such as rolling dice and shuffling MP3 decks. Rock interprets right, left, up and down gestures to generate traditional cursor-style user input commands. Roll offers joystick control by responding to tilting motions used in navigating games, maps or Web pages.'"

9 of 67 comments (clear)

  1. Its about time! by Sloan47 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Its about time! The wii limited us to throwing the remote into the TV. Now the playing field is much more open!

  2. It would be a nice safety feature.... by ptbarnett · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Maybe they can program the phone to detect when the user is driving a vehicle and disable the phone.

    1. Re:It would be a nice safety feature.... by AngryBacon · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Good idea, but if it used the motion sensors, wouldn't it disable itself if you were a passenger?

    2. Re:It would be a nice safety feature.... by alienmole · · Score: 5, Funny

      Or what if you're about to crash into the car in front of you and you want to call them to warn them?

    3. Re:It would be a nice safety feature.... by timeOday · · Score: 2, Informative

      I've seen studies claiming that cellphone users are as bad as drunk drivers. How could that be? There should have been a massive increase (or any increase) in traffic fatalities, yet there was not. Sure, there are counter trends such as airbags, but the claim that a huge percentage of people are effectively drunk driving, gives the strong impression there should be mayhem out there. Drivers do love to complain about each other, but again, look at the data I linked. I just don't see it.

    4. Re:It would be a nice safety feature.... by guruevi · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Maybe there is another reason for it. As I see in your graph, the rates have been dropping while drunk driving seems to have gone up (the morality of people has gone down, new types of drugs, new type of parties, people mixing drugs and alcohol and a more expanded use of it).

      Maybe drunk driving is not the main culprit of traffic fatalities. Of course, you tend to hear more about accidents with drunk people involved than other fatal accidents and that's just the media where it's not as interesting to report that 2 people were just not watching out than a sensational story where one was drunk/drugged.

      It's still not safe driving around drunk since in case you have to react fast, you don't which could make the accident more severe. I think it also has to do that if you're drunk and in an accident, due to the alcohol, you might get into shock faster and your body doesn't react as well or reverse to the drugs and medical help applied to you in the initial emergency procedures.

      Accidents are usually caused by 2 persons, both might not be watching out as well, the one because he is drunk, the other because he's on the phone or thinking/talking about something else. But if both persons were on the same road, and not drunk, the accident might have happened as well, because both were thinking or not watching out enough, just as severe. It's just easier to blame an accident on the alcohol which is an obvious indicator, just as it's easier to blame disappearing bees on cell phones instead of fungi

      I have driven around once while I was drunk. I knew I was drunk and adjusted my driving style accordingly and made it a very short trip because I was scared as hell. On another occasion, I knew I was over the limit but I was not impaired, still, I heightened my senses, turned off the radio etc. to make sure I wasn't missing anything on the road that could cause an accident.

      Again, I do not endorse drunk or impaired driving since you'll lose the concentration but saying it is the CAUSE of an accident is silly. Radio's and CD-players are just as good a cause of accidents as drunk driving or cell phones. Should we ban all CD-players now too? A family member of mine was in a severe accident because he was messing around with the CD-player and talking to friends in the car, his crash even appeared in the local paper and tv-newscasts because his car was total-loss but it wasn't blamed on the CD-player, it was blamed on them coming back from a party (and he was the designated driver, so he didn't have any alcohol in him according to the police report).

      --
      Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
  3. Re:Mary & Joseph by alienmole · · Score: 3, Funny

    Who writes this shit? Did the writer actually spend two seconds imagining a player swinging the cell phone like a tennis racket or golf club?
    No, but I'm guessing you did, and now you're working through the disillusionment. Hang in there bro, you'll be able to swing your cellphone once they perfect the cellphone-mounted motion-stabilized holographic projector!
  4. Motion-sensitive phones are old news in Japan by rh2600 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    My Vodafone/SoftBank v603sh had this over a year ago, and it was a 1 yen phone! Motion Sensor for Golf and some Sega FPS, Microphone for Singstar Clone, Analog TV/FM with flip screen for widescreen, 2MP camera with Optical Zoom...ahhh loved that little phone.. pity I moved back to NZ ;) You could even record off TV to the SD card on the phone - it supported EPG over data so it had Tivo-esque functionality! http://mb.softbank.jp/mb/product/2G/model/v_603sh/

  5. Re:This is a bad hack by phred75 · · Score: 2, Informative

    Actually, this isn't some flakey hack by any means. I'm a coder at this company and currently working in our mobile division. The technology has been perfected and runs efficiently (and even more so once I'm done optimizing key functions in ARM assembler). We have done quite a bit of testing and even in situations where there is lots of motion in the scene, the software is able to compensate quite nicely! We actually use the lowest resolution of the camera so power consumption is minimized. Sure accelerometers are more accurate BUT because they are so expensive, manufacturers are reluctant to use it and we offer a good alternative so long as you have a camera handy on your phone.

    As for the technology, we can do quite a lot of cool things with it. As the article stated, we have 3 distinct types of motion we can detect - rock, roll and shake.

    Roll can be used for ball rolling games, UI navigation or even as FPS controls. Shake has been used for shuffling an MP3 play list but can be used for rolling dice in an RPG or shooting virtual craps! The rock is perfect for "reloading" a gun or maybe throwing something in game. We had one app which allowed you to launch virtual pies at people. That was a popular one!

    One thing is certain... we have done something right for Japan's LARGEST cell phone carrier to have picked us up for use in 2 major game releases using their phones - Crash Bandicoot and Katamari Damashii not to mention our tech has been in used in alot of other games already. We have our camera tracking on many platforms including the PS2, XBOX 360 and PC.

    Here is the docomo press release:
    http://www.nttdocomo.com/pr/2007/001335.html

    What others are saying:
    http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2007/04/25/2553676.h tm
    http://www.digitalmediaasia.com/default.asp?Articl eID=23946