The compass—oldest known navigating instrument—has been revolutionized. Last week Bendix Aviation Corp. announced a new automatic compass that makes the old magnetic needle* look as obsolete as a ...

In the iPhone 3GS, Apple added a digital compass (magnetometer), which can additionally sense magnetic direction relative to the Earth's poles. The iPhone 4 gyroscope adds an additional new electronic ...

Motion sensing is very much "all the rage" these days, largely thanks to just how popular it has become in console gaming. Every major console maker now has some sort of motion/gesture-based control ...

KYOTO, Japan—Micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) vendor Invensense Inc. Tuesday (Nov. 9) introduced the world's first integrated MEMS to include both a gyroscope and accelerometer on a single CMOS ...

For developers who work with location data, the iPhone 4's most exciting feature is one of its most hidden: the gyroscope. The feature, which precisely measures orientation, will make location-based ...

TimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home delivery and digital subscribers. About the Archive This is a digitized version of an article from The Times’s print archive, before the start of online ...