One of the current goals of technology is to redirect computation and communication capabilities from within the traditional computer and into everyday objects and devices—to make smart devices. One important function of smart devices is motion sensing. A proprioceptive device has a sense of its own motion and position. This ability can allow pens to remember what they have written, cameras to record their positions along with images, and baseball bats to communicate to batters information about their swing. In this paper, inertial sensing is introduced as the logical choice for unobtrusive, fully general motion sensing. Example proprioceptive device applications are presented along with their sensing ranges and sensitivities. Finally, the technologies used in implementing inertial sensors are described, and a survey of commercially available accelerometers and gyroscopes is presented.
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