In a clever move to boost his business, Wolfgang Schmidt, Senior Manager of Strategic Marketing at Bosch Sensortec GmbH, recently mentioned Pokémon Go underlining the importance of MEMS and inertial management units in the year 2016 now almost behind us.

Staying in touch on social media, chatting, messaging, calling, playing games, reading articles, e-books or paying the bills, it's done on the go; walking in the street or sitting in the park, while shopping, jogging, or walking the dog. Our world is inextricably turning truly semi-virtual.

One new mobile app that has taken the world by storm is Pokémon Go, whose tremendous success and impact would not have been possible without some amazing technology under the hood: the micro-electro-mechanical-systems (MEMS) sensors all hidden inside our modern compact devices.

This is where Bosch Sensortec says it comes into the picture: for augmented reality to function smoothly and realistically, the mobile device requires a powerful inertial measurement unit (IMU) consisting of an accelerometer and a gyroscope. Firstly, the gyroscope is responsible for tracking the three-axial rotation of the device in real-time, which requires an extremely fast response time to avoid delays, or so-called latency.