Applications
Overview
Image Stabilization
Pedestrian Navigation
Smart User Interface
Overview
MEMS gyroscopes are on their way to becoming pervasive in handheld consumer electronics ranging from mobile handsets, laptops and digital cameras, to game controllers, MP3 players, television remotes and PC mice. The total market size for gyroscopes by 2010 will skyrocket to over 2 billion units. The recent use of motion sensing controllers in Sony’s Playstation 3 and Nintendo’s Wii game consoles and the development of more intuitive user navigation systems in home entertainment systems serve as a precursor for universal motion sensing applications in a wide range of consumer products.
Although many MEMS companies have been working on the development of gyroscopes, presently InvenSense is the only company in the market with working products and shipping in high volume for the consumer applications. InvenSense is leveraging its proprietary Gyro design and Nasiri-Fabrication technology, protected by more than 12 patents, to produce a whole new generation of MEMS-based products utilizing cost effective wafer-scale integration and packaging. These advances have resulted in lower production costs to achieve very low-cost single chip dual-axis gyroscopes (X-axis and Y-axis) with integrated electronics.
InvenSense, is a fabless MEMS company and has successfully transferred its proprietary technology to a number of high volume MEMS foundries, and is capable of producing thousands of gyroscope sensors on a single silicon wafer with integrated compensating electronics to address mass market consumer demands. InvenSense’s gyroscopes are manufactured using a bulk silicon micromachining process, which offers several key advantages in sensitivity and performance while ensuring consistent, reliable and higher yielding devices. This methodology eliminates the need for custom processes, meaning many commercially available foundries with off-the-shelf equipments can manufacture the devices easily and inexpensively.
Image Stabilization
Camera phones have captured about 40 percent of the cell phone market and are quickly becoming the most common image capture devices in the world. Recent research from Infotrends, a market research firm, reveals that 20% of camera phone users indicate the camera phone as their primary camera. However, continued growth in this trend is threatened if image quality does not improve.
Current camera phone images are low resolution and suffer from blurring caused by natural hand jitter. Cameras with zoom capability makes this problem even worse. As camera phones move to higher and higher resolutions and include optical zoom and autofocus features, the result will be an alarming percentage of blurred images. Market projections forecast that camera phones offering 3 megapixels and more are expected to reach 300 million units by 2008.
The small size of camera phones, coupled with their densely packed circuitry currently prohibits integration of existing image stabilization solutions used in digital still cameras. These optical components are too bulky, power-hungry and expensive to be suitable for deployment in mobile handsets. InvenSense's miniature gyroscopes and single chip image stabilization solution enables camera phone makers to implement a cost-effective method to improve image quality by eliminating blurring from shaky hands. The company is working with a number of camera module manufactures to provide solutions that will provide consumers better quality pictures and insure continued growth in the market to increase revenues for service providers.
Learn more about InvenSense BLURFREE Image Stabilization Technology
Pedestrian Navigation
Location is a great asset to mobile service providers that can be leveraged to supply customers with valuable services and better user experiences while providing market differentiation and new revenue sources. Location-based services (LBS) are starting to be offered by several mobile phone service providers around the world. Such technology can offer phone users highly personalized information and services based on their location. These can include emergency assistance, pedestrian navigation/tracking and mobile commerce. An example would be someone using their mobile phone to search for a restaurant. The LBS application would interact with other location technology components to determine the user's location and provide a list of restaurants within a certain proximity to the mobile user. Such services require not only global positioning (GPS) or terrestrial tracking technology, but must also include certain inertial sensors including gyroscopes to aid in pinpointing the user's location and to accurately track the user's position when a GPS signal is not available.
Smart User Interface
People depend on hand and body movement as an adjunct to language for effective communication. The next step for the mobile electronics industry is to add more intelligence to mobile systems by incorporating motion and gesture comprehension for improved interactivity and user experience. The gaming industry has already made considerable progress in this direction. Much more is expected in this market with the addition of small six-axis inertial measurement units (“IMU's”) integrated into portable game consoles and mobile phones.
Equally significant is the ability for mobile phones to understand gesture-based commands that may eliminate the need for pressing buttons to navigate on screen menus or to play games. In addition, with a small twist of the hand, phone users could answer and terminate calls, scroll menus, pan documents and organize information.