Facing severe competition from the Nintendo Wii, Sony has not set its goals high on getting its own technology to beat the Wii. It has designed a Break apart controller that has similarities to the Wii mote but uses space age technology to make it much more responsive a controller. The patent is for a method by which a system could track the movement of one or more controllers, with video tracking the position of the controllers and ultrasonic frequencies used to determine their distance from the console. What this means is that two different controllers would submit data to a video input device like the PlayStation Eye, with the Eye's microphone picking up on both the visual location and aural distance to track motion. The captured video information is used to identify a horizontal and vertical position for each controller within a capture area.

Certainly looks like an innovative way to add motion sensing to your console without having to worry about comparisons to Nintendo's existing technology.

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