Getting displacement from accelerometer data with Core Motion

Question

I am developing an augmented reality application that (at the moment) wants to display a simple cube on top of a surface, and be able to move in space (both rotating and dis

Answer 1

When the iPhone 4 was very new, I spent many, many hours trying to get an accurate displacement using accelerometers and gyroscope. There shouldn't have been much concern about incremental drift as device needed only move a couple of meters at most and the data collection typically ran for a few minutes at most. We tried all sorts of approaches and even had help from several Apple engineers. Ultimately, it seemed that the gyroscope wasn't up to the task. It was good for 3D orientation but that was it ... again, according to very knowledgable engineers.

I would love to hear someone contradict this - because the app never really turned out as we had hoped, etc.