Visualizing real-time data from built-in Inertial Measurement Units (IMUs)

Many modern mobile devices now integrate a plethora of built-in sensors including various motion and position sensors (such as an accelerometer, gyroscope, and magnetometer/digital compass) to enable novel forms of user interaction (such as complex gesture and motion control) as well as other environmental sensors, which can measure environmental conditions (such as an ambient light sensor and proximity sensor) to enable smart wearable applications. The Android Sensor Framework provides a comprehensive interface to access many types of sensors, which can be either hardware-based (physical sensors) or software-based (virtual sensors that derive inputs from hardware sensors). In general, there are three major categories of sensors—motion sensors, position sensors, and environmental sensors.

In this section, we will demonstrate how to utilize the Android Sensor Framework to communicate with the sensors available on your...