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2009
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The Wall Street Journal Online Profit in Motion: Tiny Sensors Take Off William M. Bulkeley Key to Wii's Controller and New iPhone, 'Mems' Are a Hot Product In a small semiconductor factory in Cambridge, Mass., next to a factory that makes Junior Mints, technicians are churning out thousands of accelerometers -- tiny mechanical motion sensors that have helped turn Nintendo Co.'s Wii into the hottest videogame console. One of the devices, each about the size of a match head, sits inside the motion-sensitive, hand-held controller that lets Wii users "play" tennis, baseball or golf. The tiny sensors are a type of microelectromechanical system, known as "mems" -- and they are hot products. The Cambridge factory belongs to Analog Devices Inc., Norwood, Mass., a big maker of specialty semiconductors that says mems have grown to be 6% of its sales in the past year and are among its fastest growing product lines. Although Analog has been making mems since 1989, the market took off when auto makers decided the tiny machines, built using semiconductor technology, were reliable enough to replace the mechanical systems used to deploy air bags. The mems market has grown steadily since. Several other companies -- including Germany's Robert Bosch GmbH; STMicroelectronics, Geneva; and Freescale Semiconductor Inc., Austin, Texas -- also make mems, primarily for automotive and industrial applications. The market is taking off in part because low-end mems motion sensors have dropped in price to less than $2 from $20 five years ago. That opens up the market for consumer applications like videogames and cellphones. Marlene Bourne, president of Bourne Research LLC, Scottsdale, Ariz., says inertial sensors, including accelerometers and gyroscopes, have become one of the fastest-growing segments of the mems industry, which had sales of $7.6 billion last year, and includes such products as micromachined print heads for inkjet printers. She says the inertial-sensor market had sales of $950 million last year, with unit sales up 9%. Accelerometers, which measure motion in three dimensions, can also detect gravity, and figure out if a device is standing up or lying down. They keep the motorized Segway scooter erect and to help Sony Corp.'s toy robot dog, the Aibo, figure out when it has fallen down. Working from inside, they detect when laptop computers have been dropped, triggering a lock that secures the hard drive before it hits the ground to protect it from damage. Some digital cameras employ mems chips to detect shakiness and compensate for blur. Richard Mannherz, customer-marketing manager for Analog's micromachined-products division, says that "more and more products will include inertial sensors so they'll know what to do without your telling them to." He says that many actions that currently require a person to push a button could be accomplished automatically by a motion sensor. One of the innovative features of Apple Inc.'s new iPhone is its automatic ability to rotate the image on its video screen to keep it right-side up when the phone tips 90 degrees from horizontal to vertical. Mems accelerometers tell the phone display how to orient itself. Analog declines to say whether its devices are used in the iPhone. Mems makers are salivating at the prospect of making the devices standard components in all cellphones -- a billion-unit-a-year market. One possible use would be to save battery power by detecting when a cellphone is stationary on a desk. That would save the phone constantly searching for a nearby cell tower -- which is necessary only when the phone is in motion. Mems don't have a lock on such applications. GestureTek Inc., Sunnyvale, Calif., makes a motion-sensing system for cellphones that analyzes images from the built-in camera, which GestureTek says requires less battery power. Ms. Bourne says she kept her industry growth forecast for mems conservative because of such alternatives. Mems also are being used in more-exotic specialty products. Roger Smith, a former Analog engineer, started Source Audio LLC, in Woburn, Mass., to make a $400 device called Hot Hand that a guitarist can wear on his finger like a large ring. Using mems to sense hand motions, the wireless device can control distortion and other sound effects by hand motion instead of stationary floor-pedals. Among early users are guitarists Andy Ross and Damian Kulash of the band OK Go, which won YouTube's 2006 music-video award. Another product, the Celestron SkyScout, combines a battery-powered geographical positioning system with a mems that detects a telescope's angle of elevation and can tell a viewer at what star or constellation it is pointed. Telescope maker Celestron LLC, Torrance, Calif., calls the $400 device a "personal planetarium." A number of small companies are trying to apply the sensors to sports. A spokesman for Freescale says it has customers who are experimenting with placing accelerometers inside baseballs and basketballs in order to track their motion. A $99 device called HangTimer is designed to accurately measure how long a snowboarder stays in the air. Some sports trainers are interested in putting accelerometers in football helmets to measure the violence of collisions and provide concussion alerts. Xsens Technologies BV, of Enschede, the Netherlands, makes skin-hugging Lycra suits with 16 accelerometers positioned on arms and legs, hands, feet and head. The sensors wirelessly broadcast information about their motion to a computer. One application is in helping computer animators produce realistic motion in their creations. Per Slycke, chief technology officer, says that Gearbox Software, a Dallas videogame developer, just signed a contract to buy several of the suits, which carry the brand name Moven, and sell for about €39,000, or about $53,000. Xsens thinks a larger market may emerge in athletic training, where coaches are already experimenting with tracking the positioning of downhill skiers and the Dutch speed-skating team. Mr. Slycke says the suits could eventually be equipped with vibrators such as those in cellphones as "feedback devices" to let an athlete know when a limb is out of position. University researchers in Enschede started working on developing a system 10 years ago to help with medical rehabilitation, but Mr. Slycke says that the suits didn't become really accurate until two years ago when reliable mems gyroscopes became widely available. Write to William M. Bulkeley at bill.bulkeley@wsj.com About GestureTek Mobile |
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GestureTek technologies have international patent protection. U.S patents include 5,534,917 (Video image based control system), 7,058,204 (Multiple camera control system), 7,227,526 (3D-vision image control system), 7,379,563 (Bi-manual movement tracker) and 7,379,566 (Optical flow-based tilt sensor). EyeMobile® is protected under patent TMA 700,194 with the Canadian Intellectual Property Office for "mobile device application software featuring gesture recognition technology."