Little heralded but absolutely essential to the experience users enjoy from their smartphones is MEMS (microelectronic and micro-electromechanical systems) technology. These are small mechanical devices driven by electricity that perform amazing functions like a 3-axis gyroscope and 3-axis accelerometer that enable the Wii Wand as well to control an interactive game or your mobile phone to locate itself in 3D space to provide augmented reality functions.
The MEMS Executive Congress 2010, where the latest technology is discussed and demonstrated, concluded last week showcasing future applications of MEMS. One example cited included shoes with embedded GPS receiver, small MEMS sensor and mobile phone transmitter to track the location of children and Alzheimer’s patients. Another example suggested that MEMS sensors, communications, and computing could be combined to create a smart home that interacted with its residence.
Keynote speaker Dr. Dan Siewiorek, professor of computer science and electrical and computer engineering at Carnegie Mellon University’s Quality of Life Center, described a future with a MEMS-filled smart device that would monitor its owner’s heart rate during exercise, help the visually impaired to grocery-shop, and remember important social clues such as people’s names, phone numbers and directions. This intelligent digital assistant would help its owner navigate his environment and sustain him daily throughout his lifetime.
The market research and strategy consulting company, Yole Développement, founded in 1998, has been following the MEMS market for some time, paints the technology with a more practical brush. It says MEMS remains a fragmented market with a limited number of applications with a market size above $200M. Development of new MEMS applications takes $45M of investment and, on average, 4 years from start to first commercial product. The Lyon, France-based firm does see some high growth segments of the market about to emerge. These include MEMS-based speakers, camera auto focus, ID trackers, smart phone digital compass and oscillators, among others. These will account for 10 percent of the total $17 billion MEMS market in 2015 and all will experience growth rates over 60 percent.
Some of the functionality the MEMS devices will provide include augmented reality and more immersive gaming experiences, precise sensing of hand jitter to improve image quality and video stability, new motion-based user interfaces, GPS dead reckoning for vehicles and indoor pedestrian navigation among others. Lack of off-the-shelf solutions that can be quickly and easily adopted has slowed widespread adoption, as OEMs have had to assemble all the hardware and develop proprietary algorithms to process the sensor data.
InvenSense, Inc. wants to eliminate this hurdle. Last week, the Sunnyvale, California-base company announced its MPU-6000 product family. The MPU-6000 is which integrates a 3-axis gyroscope and a 3-axis accelerometer on the same silicon die together with an onboard Digital Motion Processor (DMP) that can process complex 9-axis sensor fusion algorithms. The MPU-6000 family of MotionProcessors eliminates the challenges associated with selection and integration of many different motion sensors that could require signal conditioning, sensor fusion and factory calibration. It features integrated 9-axis sensor fusion algorithms that utilize an external magnetometer output through its master I2C bus to provide dead reckoning functionality.
Motion processing is expanding into smart phones, tablets, TV remotes, handheld gaming devices and gaming consoles, digital still and video cameras and many other consumer products. The InvenSense solution could reduce the time and cost of integrating this functionality into consumer products.
No comments:
Post a Comment