MEMS are for automobiles. MEMS are for optical switches. MEMS are for … your Palm organizer?
Apparently so, if the appointment of former Palm Inc. CEO Carl Yankowski to the board of Caveo Technology means anything.
“Obviously he knows the handheld industry and all the people in it,” said David Lee, chief executive at Cambridge, Mass.-based Caveo, a consumer-oriented MEMS product developer that is looking to break into the handheld device market. “He, of course, can make the introductions.”
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But MEMS accelerometers in handhelds? Why?
Innovation seeking application
Technologies don’t survive the marketplace on the merits of cool, and mobile MEMS certainly needs its killer app.
“I think gaming is the Trojan horse,” said Jeff Depew, chief executive of MotionSense, which has integrated MEMS components from Kionix Inc. into a 35 X 24 X 2.1 millimeter prototype card for Palm handhelds. “It’s the one that everyone gets comfortable with immediately.”
If Depew is correct, gaming may gently introduce the tilt-based user interface into handheld devices, making users comfortable with it in the same way that computer solitaire trained a generation of workers to use the mouse.
Pure play gaming companies are already there. For example, Nintendo integrated a MEMS tilt sensor in the Kirby Tilt ‘N’ Tumble Game Boy cartridge released in April of last year, which uses tilt control instead of buttons.
However, while gaming may facilitate the introduction of tilt control, it’s not just about fun and games. “Think of the functionality that cell phone manufacturers want to add to their devices,” Depew said. “It’s 20 percent voice, 40 percent browsing and SMS (short message service) and 40 percent gaming. You don’t need us to make a better call. You do need us to enhance the other 80 percent.”
Caveo has already experimented with security applications. Its first product, the Anti-Theft PC Card, uses an Analog Devices MEMS accelerometer to trigger an alarm if someone tries to lift your laptop.
The standard application for handhelds is screen navigation. For example, a MEMS tilt sensor would let a user scroll through a contacts list without pressing buttons. While that may not sound scintillating, it appeals to cost-conscious manufacturers.
“It’s got to have a good application,” Lee said. “Motion input can allow them to remove buttons, large ones, which lets them increase the screen size or reduce cost.”
Or even both.
Motion control proponents say it also stacks up well against voice-activated user interfaces. “There are people working in the voice recognition arena,” Lee said. “We don’t see that as competitive so much as complementary. It does different things. You can’t draw with it. You can’t browse with it. If you have games that have spatial issues, you can’t use it at all.”
In addition, consumer applications may give MEMS a higher profile. “People would much rather write about something for virtual reality than how an airbag or a wheel sensor is now a little bit better or cheaper,” said Allen Grumm, president of the venture firm Rand Capital, which recently invested $750,000 in Kionix’s ongoing second round of funding. “Although, in reality, the MEMS in the auto will impact many more people than putting it in your Palm.”
Just the same, the tilt interface isn’t likely to be the next airbag.
“There are other applications that I think will drive more volume,” Grumm said, citing automotive and pharmaceutical uses.
Kionix says ramp-ups in volume could begin late this year. However, Lee thinks this application is going to take something more like a year-and-a-half to get up some steam.
Caveo, which until now has been angel funded, opened its first venture round in March. Lee expects to close by the end of the year. He also said Caveo may soon announce a “fairly large contract with a large marketing and sales organization that’s already in this business.”
MotionSense, which has thus far existed on $1.6 million in seed financing, also has an open round. Depew expects to close “with any luck, within about six weeks.”
Commercializing MEMS sensors in handhelds is on both companies’ agendas to accomplish with their first round funding.