Method and System for Waking Up a Device Due to Motion

• US 20100085203A1
• Filed: 10/08/2008
• Published: 04/08/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 10/08/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Uniloc Luxembourg S.à r.l. (f/k/a Uniloc Luxembourg S.A.) (Uniloc Corporation Pty. Limited)
• Original Assignee: DP Technologies, Inc.
• Inventors: Christensen, Mark Andrew, Kinsolving, Arthur, Kahn, Philippe, Vogel, David
• Granted Patent: US 8,872,646 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 340/669
• CPC Class Codes: G01P 13/00 Indicating or recording presence, absence, or direction, of movement electric switches H01H; counting moving objects G06M7/00
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 1/3203 Power management, i.e. event-based initiation of a power-saving mode
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 1/3231 Monitoring the presence, absence or movement of users
• CPC Class Codes: Y02D 10/00 Energy efficient computing, e.g. low power processors, power management or thermal management

Abstract

A method comprises determining an idle sample value for a dominant axis of a device in an idle state. The method further comprises registering a motion of the device, and evaluating the motion. The method further comprises waking up the device when the analysis of the motion indicates a change in the dominant axis of the device and/or a level of acceleration beyond a threshold.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

determining an idle sample value for a dominant axis of a device;

registering a motion of the device; and

waking up the device when the motion of the device indicates a change in the dominant axis of the device.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein determining the idle sample value for the dominant axis comprises:

receiving motion data from a motion sensor;

processing the motion data to establish an idle sample value; and

processing the idle sample value to establish the dominant axis.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein the motion sensor comprises an accelerometer.

4. The method of claim 2, wherein the idle sample value comprises a long-average of accelerations over a sample period along the dominant axis recorded when the device goes to idle mode after a period of inactivity.

5. The method of claim 1, further comprising determining the idle sample value for each of the other axes of the device.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein registering the motion of the device comprises:

receiving motion data from a motion sensor; and

processing the motion data to determine a current sample value of the dominant axis of the device.

7. The method of claim 1, further comprising comparing a difference between a current sample value along the dominant axis determined based on the motion of the device and the idle sample value of the dominant axis against a threshold value.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the change in the dominant axis comprises a change in acceleration along the dominant axis.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein waking up the device further comprises configuring the device to return to a last active device state.

10. The method of claim 6, wherein the current sample value is a long average of accelerations.

11. The method of claim 6, further comprising determining the current sample value for each of the other axes of the device.

12. The method of claim 6, wherein the motion sensor comprises an accelerometer.

13. The method of claim 6, wherein processing the motion data further comprises

verifying whether the motion data comprises one or more glitches;

and

removing the one or more glitches in the motion data from the motion data before calculating the long average.

14. The method of claim 6, further comprising determining that the device is to be woken up based on the difference between the current sample value and the idle sample value being greater than a threshold value.

15. The method of claim 8, further comprising:

determining a new dominant axis based on the motion data received from the motion sensor;

computing a difference between the current sample value along the new dominant axis and an idle sample value along the new dominant axis determined when the device goes to idle mode after a period of inactivity; and

comparing the difference against a threshold value to establish whether to wake the device up.

16. A system comprising:

a long average logic to create one or more long averages of accelerations as measured by a motion sensor over a period of time;

a dominant axis logic to determine a dominant axis of a device based on motion data; and

a computation logic to determine if the long averages of accelerations indicate a true motion of the device.

17. The system of claim 16, further comprising a motion sensor logic to detect motion data.

18. The system of claim 17, wherein the motion sensor logic comprises an accelerometer to detect acceleration along one or more axes.

19. The system of claim 16, further comprising a sample period logic to set the period over which motion data is collected to compute the one or more long averages of accelerations.

20. The system of claim 16, further comprising a power logic to activate the device when the motion data indicates the device should be woken up.

21. The system of claim 16, further comprising a device state logic to restore the device to a last active state.

22. The system of claim 21, wherein the device state logic allows user interaction to customize applications to be displayed when the device is woken up.

23. The system of claim 16, further comprising a glitch corrector logic to correct one or more glitches in the motion data.

24. The system of claim 23, wherein the glitch corrector removes the one or more glitches before the one or more long averages are calculated.