Deriving Displacement from 3-Axis Accelerometers

This paper describes a formal approach to derive displacement from a 3 axis accelerometer. It forms part of a larger research aspiration striving to afford computer users, including gamers, full physical immersion into 3D environments utilising affordable and practical motion sensor technologies. To derive displacement from the accelerometer a motion sensing device was built utilising a standard Windows PC compatible gamepad and software device driver. The accelerometer replaced the gamepad’s analogue joysticks and was mounted in a black box small enough to be held in the hand. A software application was written that collected data, in real time, from the motion sensing device. A series of experiments were performed, the data captured and analysed. It was observed that specific motion characteristics correlated with oscillations in the data. A hypothesis was formed and the focus of this paper is on data analysis with a view to test the hypothesis.