iPhone IMU

The iPhone IMU node captures wrist motion data from an iPhone's built-in inertial measurement unit (IMU) and streams it to the Spine network. This enables natural, gesture-based control of the robotic arm — the surgeon moves their wrist and the robot follows.

Why IMU-based control?

Joystick input requires the operator to learn an unintuitive mapping between stick movements and robot motion. IMU-based wrist control is more natural and closer to how a surgeon actually moves during a procedure — making it a better approximation of real surgical input.

Data captured

Sensor	Data	Rate
Accelerometer	X, Y, Z acceleration (m/s²)	100 Hz
Gyroscope	Roll, pitch, yaw rate (rad/s)	100 Hz

Signal flow

iPhone IMU → Wi-Fi/UDP → spine-node/input/imu → input/raw (Spine)
                                                        ↓
                                                   Purifier
                                                        ↓
                                                  input/clean
                                                        ↓
                                             Kinematics Engine

Published topics

Topic	Type	Description
input/raw	IMUMsg	Fused accelerometer + gyroscope reading

Links

• GitHub

See also

• Input Overview — all supported input devices
• Purifier — Kalman filter applied to the raw IMU stream
• Kinematics Engine — converts clean motion into joint angles