Author: Zhou Aoge
IoT Think Tank Original
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—— [Guide] ——
Bosch produces about 5 million MEMS sensors daily, with an annual shipment of 1.5 billion, now targeting the fragmented IoT market, leveraging advanced technology and resource advantages to provide intelligent, customized MEMS sensor products. On one hand, the explosion of the IoT has brought unprecedented development opportunities to the sensor industry; on the other hand, the technological upgrades, cost reductions, and product diversification of sensor manufacturers support the rapid development of the IoT industry.
Sensors have been around for about 150 years since their inception in the 1960s, and with the rapid development of the IoT industry, there are more and higher demands for sensor technology.
Sensors are seen as an important enabling technology for the IoT, with the global sensor market size reaching $4 billion in 2017, expected to reach $65 billion by 2021, with MEMS sensors being a key growth point. During the Munich (Shanghai) Electronics Show, Bosch Sensortec focused on showcasing three products: BMA400, BMI085, and an interactive projection module.
During the conference, I had the honor of interviewing Mr. Ralf Schellin, the head of MEMS products at Bosch Sensortec, to discuss the future of IoT sensors and related issues, and I have summarized the insights as follows:
Mr. Ralf Schellin, head of MEMS products at Bosch Sensortec
The Evolution of Three Categories of Sensors
The huge growth space of IoT wearable devices, AR/VR, smart home appliances, smart industry, robotics, drones, etc. brings opportunities for various types of sensors, including inertial, pressure, temperature and humidity, and gas sensors. As the world’s largest supplier of MEMS sensors, Bosch currently ships about 1.5 billion units annually, with a daily production of about 5 million chips, averaging a market share of about 40%. Bosch Sensortec was established in 2005, originating from Bosch’s automotive electronics MEMS Sensors division, specifically providing MEMS sensor application products for consumer electronics. From initially focusing on the mobile phone market, to later providing MEMS products for wearable devices, to now looking at opportunities in the IoT market, Bosch Sensortec has always been at the forefront of the market, exploring the future of IoT sensors and experiencing different stages of scene requirements, which correspond to the three major categories of sensors.
First Category: Sensors with Specific Functions.
Leopold Beer, President of Bosch Sensortec Asia Pacific, stated that this type of sensor has a simple interrupt mechanism, mainly used in relatively simple application interfaces, such as screen stabilization, portrait/landscape switching, or some gaming uses, where most applications use native data. As long as the sensor detects it, it will provide data for design engineers to carry out related application designs.
Second Category: Pre-programmed Sensors.
With the upgrade of applications, the diversified demand for sensors can no longer be satisfied by a simple interrupt; it also requires embedding pre-edited functions. For example, the use of pedometers in wristbands and tap recognition applications require a pre-programmed device to optimize for complex usage scenarios.
Third Category: “AI” Sensors.
The popularity of artificial intelligence has gradually raised higher requirements for sensor data collection, and the interaction of IoT scenarios has promoted the evolution of intelligent sensors. For example, users in mountainous areas or in high temperature and humidity environments may encounter difficulties in collecting environmental data solely relying on smartphones. Once users put smartphones in their pockets, many sensors will be covered, and the collected data may become erroneous or even ineffective. Whether it’s machine vision or voice assistants, these services require a large amount of data for analysis and learning, while also needing detailed and complex monitoring and data collection of the surrounding environment. This necessitates intelligent connections between multiple sensors to perform extensive computational analysis to provide users with better predictions and results.
Three Core Products Showcase Technological Power
In recent years, the single smartphone market has begun to encounter bottlenecks. From the situation in the second half of 2017, the global smartphone market shipment growth has slowed down, and the industry urgently needs new hotspots to replace the stagnation of smartphone growth. Relevant data shows that the IoT market will break through the $1 trillion mark in 2020, with over 30 billion devices connected to the IoT, and the AR glasses market capacity will reach 30 million units by 2024. The smart speaker market is experiencing significant growth, with more application scenarios for voice control and visualization, as well as an increasing demand for low-power and compact solutions; the demand for visual user interfaces, smart home devices, and small appliances for online shopping will also be significantly enhanced.
Ralf Schellin, head of MEMS products at Bosch Sensortec, stated, “The IoT market is no longer like before, where mobile applications tend to be concentrated and similar. The diversification of wearable and other IoT devices has led to the fragmented market characteristics. For this field, our products must be targeted, and our products will match different application requirements and technologies. Facing the fragmented market, Bosch has already accumulated sufficient technical depth.”
Here, I will briefly introduce the three targeted core products brought by Bosch: BMA400, BMI085, and the Interactive Projection Module.
BMA400 – Combining Ultra-Low Power Consumption and High Performance
BMA400 is an ultra-low power accelerometer sensor for wearable devices and IoT. It consumes only one-tenth of the power of existing accelerometers while providing stable and high-performance service. Its significantly reduced power requirements greatly extend battery life, especially for devices powered by button batteries. With a step counter that consumes only 4μA, and its intelligent power management features (such as built-in activity recognition), it can unprecedentedly extend the battery life of wearable devices (such as fitness bands, smart clothing, smartwatches, and activity trackers).
Its size is only 2.0 x 2.0 x 0.95mm³, which can be designed into very small watches, earrings, or even glasses. In addition to the previous accelerometers that only provided screen rotation functions, it can also allow users to do more processing, such as counting steps and activity recognition. With ultra-low power consumption, ultra-small size, high performance, and ease of integration, hardware manufacturers can design more stylish and cool products.
BMI085 – Opening the Door to the Smart World of VR/AR
BMI085 is a high-performance 6-axis inertial measurement unit (IMU) that combines a 3-axis 16-bit MEMS accelerometer and a 3-axis 16-bit MEMS gyroscope, suitable for demanding applications such as VR and AR. Applications include navigation, body/human motion tracking, and high-end gaming. The compact MEMS sensor package features multiple functions, combining ultra-low drift gyroscopes and low-noise accelerometers, significantly reducing the uncomfortable motion sickness effect. Its ultra-precise instantaneous detection of head movements reduces time delay to nearly imperceptible minimum. As a result, electronic device manufacturers can create a more realistic and immersive virtual and augmented reality experience, allowing headset users to immerse themselves in the virtual environment for longer periods without needing frequent breaks.
Ralf Schellin further mentioned that the new BMI085’s extremely low latency enables headset manufacturers to eliminate image drift and provide a realistic reality experience. The IMU offers less than 3 ms of low motion-to-photon latency and achieves near-perfect stability in environments that frequently experience high temperature fluctuations, such as continuous head-mounted displays (HMD) or augmented reality headsets. This system further improves accuracy, which is crucial for today’s lightning-fast high-definition augmented reality/virtual reality applications.
Flexible Interactive Projection Module
The interactive projection module mainly provides a more flexible interactive interface for IoT usage scenarios, allowing for greater diversity. This product uses Bosch’s proprietary MOEMS laser scanning technology for projecting and sensing interactive images. It enables focus-free laser projection and can flexibly transform any surface into a particularly intuitive and visually appealing virtual user interface (UI), making it very suitable for use with home appliances, smart speakers, augmented reality glasses, wearable devices, etc.
In fact, it is an interactive projection module based on a micro-scanner, an optical micro-system with approximate dimensions of 7mm in height, 30mm in width, and 30mm in length (reference design dimensions). Its main feature is focus-free; the laser technology scans each point directly for automatic docking, allowing projection on different geometric surfaces, even at varying distances (Leopold Beer stated, “Since it is an IoT device interactive interface, the distance does not need to be far; additionally, longer distances can be achieved through laser module upgrades, with higher power laser modules for clear variability, but this can be harmful to the eyes”).
Technological Integration and Market Demand Feedback
As we all know, Bosch is the world’s largest supplier in the MEMS Sensors field. Faced with the saturation of the smartphone market and the continuous growth opportunities and challenges of the IoT market, Bosch is well-prepared for upgrading and transformation. Leading MEMS products towards embedded software and algorithms, integrated sensor combinations, and overall solution upgrades, customized and intelligent products are moving towards integrated development.
The integration of Bosch Sensortec’s development is reflected in two major aspects: one is technological integration and innovation, and the other is the integration of multi-faceted market demands, thereby more accurately defining products and quickly promoting market applications.
In an interview, Ralf Schellin stated that currently, in terms of technological integration for IoT sensors, three major trends have been observed:
First, the integration of Sensors and Sensors. For example, the integration of accelerometers and gyroscopes, and even cross-type sensor integration, such as the mutual integration of inertial sensors, environmental sensors, and optical sensors.
Second, the integration of Sensors with MCUs or algorithms. Their integration will provide customers with lower power consumption and smaller modular products, making it convenient for users to develop flexibly.
Third, the integration of Sensors with wireless communication modules. For example, the integration of Zigbee, LoRa, Bluetooth, and other modules facilitates data transmission between edge-end sensors, thereby facilitating intelligent processing at the edge of the IoT system.
On the other hand, Bosch is a large group with about 400,000 employees distributed across more than 60 different countries, with four major business divisions: automotive and smart transportation, industrial technology, energy and building technology, and consumer goods. In 2017, it achieved sales of over 7.8 billion euros.
Ralf Schellin stated, “Bosch is not only the world’s leading MEMS supplier but also a global leader in home appliances, a global automotive technology provider, and a leader in Industry 4.0. In addition, Bosch has dedicated business units focusing on IoT applications, including cloud and connectivity. We define products for IoT applications in the future, first discussing with our internal business units to understand their grasp of future IoT directions, product needs, and then returning to our Sensor requirements; we will not make assumptions without basis and will discuss their needs with external customers. Combining inputs from internal and external demands, Bosch will precisely define our Sensor solutions and systems, continuously adapting to IoT applications.”
Conclusion
Sensors, as carriers that receive information from the outside world in the IoT, are an important sensing layer front end, and the future of sensors will usher in a period of rapid development with the popularization of the IoT. With the continuous exploration of advanced sensor manufacturers such as Bosch and the continuous maturity of technologies such as artificial intelligence, VR/AR, edge computing, and blockchain, sensors will be the first to open Pandora’s box of IoT.
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