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DETROIT, June 15, 2004 — Sensors have long been on the short list of “next big things.” And this year’s Sensors Expo clearly showed that, as far as end users are concerned, the benefits made possible by sensors span such a wide array of applications that it’s hard to see “sensors” as any one thing at all.
A video at the Freescale Semiconductor booth at the Detroit conference is a case in point. It showed a man going through his daily routine. As he went from bed to breakfast to car and to work he seamlessly interacted with an endless variety of embedded sensors and electronics. They were in his bed, his dishwasher, his tires and his cell phone.
For most of us, however, they’re not there yet. And if the June 7-10 Sensors Expo showed the variety of markets served by sensors, it also showed how hard companies are working to create new markets for sensors and refine their products to suit them.
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Over 200 exhibitors displayed products and services at the annual show, which was held at the Cobo Exhibition & Conference Center in downtown Detroit. Events began Monday and ran through Thursday of last week. A variety of symposia and workshops were grouped into tracks devoted to technology, applications, intelligent systems and the business of sensors.
Freescale, a Motorola subsidiary that has registered to go public, rolled out a new MEMS sensor family that illustrates how manufacturers are simultaneously upping the integration of their devices while looking for markets that leverage such tight integration.
Freescale’s inertial sensors, known as the MMA62xxQ series, sense very small forces across two axes — an improvement over the previous generation chips, which only sensed across a single axis. The new generation chip also comes in a smaller package designed to fit within the tight confines of consumer electronic devices.
This combination of features makes Freescale’s sensors useful for emerging applications like motion-based game controllers, as well as for tilt-based scrolling for cell phones and handheld computers. Freescale is also looking into freefall detection for mobile electronics, whereby a device would know if it is falling and automatically lock down delicate parts like the hard disk drive head.
“There is a lot of potential here,” said Marlene Bourne, a senior MEMS analyst at the research firm In-Stat/MDR, about tilt scrolling, which would let users move through screens on a cell phone or handheld computer just by tilting the device. “It’s very intuitive.”
Asked whether she thought some users might not like adapting to tilt scrolling, Bourne acknowledged, “maybe there’s going to be some resistance.” But she added that teenage and 20-something users of computer games and gadgets are quick learners and early adopters and are therefore likely to lead the way. The Freescale sensors cost $3.60 in 1,000-unit quantities.
Among the other MEMS developers making product announcements at the show were Crossbow Technology Inc., MEMSIC Inc. and Infineon Technologies.
Crossbow announced a new module that works with industry-standard wireless protocols. Dubbed the MICAz mote, it uses Crossbow sensors to send audio, video and other high bandwidth information over a wireless network.
MEMSIC announced a deal to supply its accelerometers to Mitsubishi Electric for use in its V401D cell phone with a built-in digital camera. The chip will detect the orientation of the camera and make sure that images appear right side up. regardless of whether they were shot as portrait or landscape photos. The chip will also allow the phone to function as a pedometer.
Meanwhile, Munich-based Infineon announced two MEMS products that are based on the technology of SensoNor, a firm Infineon acquired last year. The products include a second-generation SP30 tire pressure sensor and the SAR10 rollover sensor. Both feature integrated sensors and ICs in a single package.
In addition at the Expo, MEMS foundries such as Dalsa Semiconductor and Micralyne Inc. exhibited their services and capabilities, along with other companies seeking to improve existing sensors with novel forms of MEMS.
One of those firms, a Montreal-based MicroBridge Technologies Inc., displayed its Rejustor, a MEMS-based resistor. The product will replace a variety of existing methods that adujust a sensor circuit’s resistance and thereby optimize its performance.