Shaping the Future of MEMS
A new micro-electro-mechanical system (MEMS) conference debuted this week, Shaping the Future of MEMS and Sensors, on September 10 in Santa Clara, California, hosted by STMicroelectronics. A wide variety of representatives from the MEMS ecosystem presented their views on where MEMS is headed, in two parallel tracks, one on MEMS in consumer electronics and the other on MEMS in healthcare and wellness.
First up in the consumer track was Becky Oh, president and CEO of PNI Sensors Inc. (Santa Rosa, Calif.), who presented the history behind PNI’s latest innovation — a tiny 1.5-by-1.5-by-0.5-millimeter chip that can perform the complex sensor fusion function for any manufacturer’s accelerometer, gyroscope, magnetometer, and altimeter, then output location readings to any applications processor. Called Sentral, the hardware state-machine chip is similar in function to the M7 sensor fusion chip just announced by Apple for its iPhone 5s in that it offloads the sensor fusion function from the application processor while consuming just one percent of its power.
Other highlights in the consumer track included Broadcom’s senior program manager, Steve Malkos, who described an innovative sensor fusion algorithm for determining location information for vehicles by combining the outputs from GPS with the dead-reckoning capabilities of accelerometer, gyroscope, magnetometer, and altimeter. Called the Hybrid Universal Location Application, HULA uses Kalman filters to compensate for errors in individual sensors — such as blocked GPS signals or stray magnetic fields affecting magnetometer readings — resulting in more accurate location information.