Earbuds, smart glasses, and wearables that know your moves and gestures, work faster, and save battery. See how motion sensing makes devices smarter.
TDK’s new InvenSense SmartMotion solutions help devices like TWS earbuds, smart glasses, AR eyewear, smartwatches, fitness bands, and other IoT gadgets understand motion more accurately while using less power. By moving motion-tracking tasks from central processors directly onto the sensor, these solutions allow devices to make intelligent, real-time decisions locally, keeping other components in low-power mode and extending battery life. Built-in sensor fusion and machine learning handle complex motion analysis automatically, reducing the software work needed from developers.
The suite uses the ICM-456xx 6-axis IMU family, offering precise motion tracking and edge intelligence for consumer devices:
- ICM-45606 – Optimized for TWS earbuds, headphones, and hearables. It delivers high-accuracy motion and yaw sensing, vocal vibration detection, and machine learning for gestures and activity recognition.
- ICM-45687 – Aimed at wearables and IoT devices. It supports on-chip features like bring-to-see, wake-on-motion, tap detection, and activity classification through machine learning.
- ICM-45685 – Designed for smart glasses. It enables wear detection, vocal vibration detection, high-precision head orientation tracking, optical/electronic image stabilization, posture recognition, real-time translation, and intuitive UI control – all at ultra-low power.
For smart glasses specifically, TDK combines these IMUs with TMR sensors for hinge-angle detection, MEMS microphones for voice-based AI, ultrasonic Time-of-Flight sensors for gesture and wear detection, and the PositionSense 9-axis solution (IMU + TMR magnetometer) for precise orientation and navigation. These integrations make devices smarter, more responsive, and power-efficient without adding software complexity.
“The challenge in today’s wearable market is delivering features like seamless augmented reality (AR) or high-fidelity spatial audio without sacrificing the compact, stylish form factor and all-day battery life,” said Pankaj Aggarwal, VP & GM of the Consumer and Industrial Motion, InvenSense, a TDK group company. “Our ICM-456xx family with BalancedGyro technology and on-chip intelligence solves this problem. It ensures that every user head turn, every UI gesture, and every AR overlay is instantaneous, stable, and incredibly power efficient.”
