Sony attempting to patent motion sensing technology

You’ve probably heard the whole deal about Sony and its SIXAXIS controller. There is something silly behind the whole fiasco with the rumble feature of Immersion and the chuckles that ensued when they tried to explain their reasons behind adding motion sensing to their controller instead of the much-beloved rumbling goodness.

Well, in an added bit of controller nuttiness, how about we take a look at a patent found by Gamers Reports. This patent application is for a remote input device for a game console. Part of the abstract puts it best, actually:

An input device providing users with a pointing capability includes a sender portion and a receiver portion. The sender portion is adapted to be manipulated by a user to specify a target point within a target area. The sender portion projects a light beam including a pattern on to the target area. A receiver portion includes one or more sensor units located in or near the target area.

It sounds a lot like how we’d describe Nintendo’s Wiimote technology. The problem is, this is a Sony patent application.

Filed as patent application number 20060267935 in 2005, this is actually a different patent from the EyeToy patent mentioned in July. Specifically, the main thing you can note here is the mention of sensor units near the target area, which sounds a lot more like the Wii’s sensor bar than the camera function of the Eyetoy. The basic description of the proposal also talks about using the sensor to determine the relative placement of the input device in reference to the sensor.

Now, it certainly sounds like some kind of Wiimote patent, but you can’t really tell. If they start to design the approved patent’s tech to look a lot like some flying mouse for PS3 play however, then you may want to go somewhere else to wave a magic wand.

You’ve probably heard the whole deal about Sony and its SIXAXIS controller. There is something silly behind the whole fiasco with the rumble feature of Immersion and the chuckles that ensued when they tried to explain their reasons behind adding motion sensing to their controller instead of the much-beloved rumbling goodness.

Well, in an added bit of controller nuttiness, how about we take a look at a patent found by Gamers Reports. This patent application is for a remote input device for a game console. Part of the abstract puts it best, actually:

An input device providing users with a pointing capability includes a sender portion and a receiver portion. The sender portion is adapted to be manipulated by a user to specify a target point within a target area. The sender portion projects a light beam including a pattern on to the target area. A receiver portion includes one or more sensor units located in or near the target area.

It sounds a lot like how we’d describe Nintendo’s Wiimote technology. The problem is, this is a Sony patent application.

Filed as patent application number 20060267935 in 2005, this is actually a different patent from the EyeToy patent mentioned in July. Specifically, the main thing you can note here is the mention of sensor units near the target area, which sounds a lot more like the Wii’s sensor bar than the camera function of the Eyetoy. The basic description of the proposal also talks about using the sensor to determine the relative placement of the input device in reference to the sensor.

Now, it certainly sounds like some kind of Wiimote patent, but you can’t really tell. If they start to design the approved patent’s tech to look a lot like some flying mouse for PS3 play however, then you may want to go somewhere else to wave a magic wand.