Just in case it wasn’t enough for Nintendo to shadow drop Nintendo Sound Clock: Alarmo on us, they also saw fit to ensure Alarmo was the latest project to be covered during their “Ask the Developer” interview series. Across four chapters, Producer Yosuke Tamori and Director, Tetsuya Akama were asked many questions, and now it is time to hear their answers.
When talking about Alarmo, Tamori and Akama covered how Alarmo uses motion sensors:
Nintendo Sound Clock | Alarmo Devs on Using Motion Sensors:
Yosuke Tamori: One of our in-house projects was to research motion sensor technology. As this sensor maintains privacy since it doesn’t use a camera, we had an idea for how it could be highly suitable for use in the bedroom, so we decided to kick off a new project to see what we could do with it.
Tetsuya Akama: It’s generally known as a “radio wave sensor”. To put it very simply, it uses the reflection of radio waves to measure the distance from and speed of an object. Self-driving cars, drones, and robots are equipped with sensors like these to help avoid collisions. The key feature is that it can recognise very subtle movements, and unlike cameras, it doesn’t need to film videos, so privacy is better protected compared to cameras. Since it uses radio waves, it can be used in dark rooms. It can also detect movements even if there are obstacles, as long as the radio waves can pass through.
Yosuke Tamori: This sensor can detect the movement of a person in bed even when they’re covered with a duvet, and it doesn’t need to use images or video like a camera. Due to those characteristics, we’d been discussing internally for some time that a motion sensor could also be suitable for use in a private space, such as a bedroom.
We knew that the theme was to support people during their sleep, and we were looking for a way to achieve this. However, it was only after a lot of technical trial and error and building many prototypes that we decided to focus on alarm clocks.
The motion sensor used in this device detects a sleeper’s movements, and there are certain body movements that they make just before waking up. From an early stage, we thought that if we could get this sensor to detect the timing of these movements, people could use it to help themselves wake up feeling refreshed. But it was technologically quite difficult for the sensor to detect those movements accurately enough back then, so we continued experimenting for a while.
Then, our programmers found a way to use the sensor effectively, and there was a point when its responsiveness improved dramatically. They developed a system that detects approximately where a person is on a bed based on the distance and angle measured by the sensor. This made it possible for the sensor to capture the moment a person gets in or out of bed more accurately. It was at this time that we started discussing the possibility of developing an alarm clock that automatically stops as soon as a person gets out of bed.
For the full interview, why not click here to check out Ask the Developer Vol. 14, Nintendo Sound Clock: Alarmo – Chapter 1:
Ask the Developer | Nintendo Sound Clock: Alarmo (Participating Developers)
- Yosuke Tamori | Entertainment Planning & Development Division, Production Group No.4 (Producer)
- Tetsuya Akama | Technology Development Department, Technology Development Group No.1 (Director)
