Innovation in MEMS—and Elsewhere—Starts with Market Disruption

When Thomas A. Edison invented the phonograph in 1877, he first envisioned its use for letter writing and other forms of dictation, but he didn’t foresee that his invention would one day transform the way that people listen to music, expanding that experience from live performance only to recorded music in the comfort of one’s own home.

Let’s go one step further. Read this excerpt from the December 22, 1877 issue of Scientific American with a modern eye, and you might think that Edison’s work portended the invention of AI-enabled chatbots that mimic human conversation: “Mr. Thomas A. Edison recently came into this office, placed a little machine on our desk, turned a crank, and the machine inquired as to our health, asked how we liked the phonograph, informed us that it was very well, and bid us a cordial good night.”

On a literal level, we can’t draw a linear connection, but on a conceptual level, Edison was onto something. His work—as well as that of other pioneers who followed him closely, including Alexander Graham Bell—laid the foundation for future voice and acoustic applications, including smart speakers, cellular phones, and digital audio books.

Innovation in MEMS has progressed similarly. It has not always moved in a linear fashion, but there have been flashes of brilliance along the way. The first MEMS accelerometers in air bag crash sensors, commercialized by Analog Devices in the mid- to late 1990s, proved that MEMS devices can be manufactured in high volume and used in environments with high vibration and wide temperature variation. The Nasiri-Fabrication platform, which InvenSense used to manufacture the first high-volume MEMS gyros for consumer applications in the early 2000s, was another major leap in innovation.

Here we are in 2023, with billions of MEMS sensors now deployed in thousands of different electronic applications, and innovation has stagnated. Our industry still contends with the limitations of non-standard processes and packaging approaches, long design-to-delivery life cycles, varying degrees of high cost, and issues with reliability and accuracy. Despite this, MEMS technology has unlimited upside potential. All we need to do is fix it at a foundational level.

That’s what we’re doing at Omnitron Sensors. We’re disrupting the market with a new topology for MEMS that simplifies fabrication to improve capacitance, increase ruggedness, improve yield, speed design-to-manufacture, and reduce cost. And it’s through our new topology for MEMS that we’re able to build better MEMS devices that span markets and applications, from the first MEMS step-scanning mirrors for LiDAR to better IMUs, better actuators, and better pumps.

Interested in learning more?

Omnitron Co-founder & CEO Eric Aguilar will present Omnitron’s new topology for MEMS at MEMS World Summit Europe, June 13-14, 2023 in Porto, Portugal. There’s still time to register for this annual event, which attracts industry leaders and decision-makers from the global MEMS and sensors industry.

Or, if you’re not able to attend MEMS World Summit Europe, please email Omnitron Sensors today.


Why Isn’t LiDAR in Every Autonomous Navigation System?

The mechanical engineer Karl Friedrich Benz invented the first motor car powered by a gasoline combustion engine in 1884/1885. Benz, Gottlieb Daimler, Wilhelm Maybach and other pioneering inventors of early motor cars would have been hard-pressed to imagine modern cars, many of which offer advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) that improve automotive safety, independent of the operator.

Karl Friedrich Benz’s Benz Patent-Motorwagen, circa 1885/86

The possibility of fully self-driving cars, self-flying cargo planes, and package-delivery drones would have seemed even more far-fetched to these 19th-century engineers. But as 21st-century engineers, we recognize that ADAS, robotic cars, drones, and industrial robotics—all applications featuring some level of autonomous functionality—are not pie-in-the-sky imaginings. And the key to realizing them commercially is the perfection of LiDAR.

LiDAR—which stands for light detection and ranging—is essential to autonomous navigation. In fact, it does so much more than the more mature vision technologies, cameras and radar, which are also used in autonomous systems. Only LiDAR provides depth and functions seamlessly at all levels of light. It also delivers phenomenal resolution, so it can perceive both moving and stationary objects—another critical advantage over cameras and radar.

Given LiDAR’s technical strengths, why isn’t it ubiquitous?

As a sensor IP company with an executive team that also has years of experience with LiDAR, we’ve given this a lot of thought. And we’d like to share this with you.

Read Omnitron CEO Eric Aguilar’s article in EE Times, Want Better Autonomous Navigation? Start with LiDAR.

Or email us today for more information.

And if you’re interested in the history of the automobile, check out this Library of Congress page.

Innovation in MEMS Starts with Its Topology

The first iPhone rolled out in mid-2007. It had a single MEMS device—a 3-axis accelerometer—and one each of a simple proximity sensor and ambient light sensor. The iPhone 14, on the other hand, has multiple MEMS microphones, a LiDAR sensor for face recognition, a high dynamic-range gyro and high-g accelerometer, a barometric pressure sensor, a haptic touch sensor, a proximity sensor and dual ambient light sensors. While approximately $1B of the $6+B overall MEMS market came from consumer and mobile in 2007, analysts predict that by 2026, $11.27B of the overall $18.2B will come from consumer and mobile.

That’s just consumer and mobile, of course. The first major commercial MEMS design was an Analog Devices accelerometer used in automotive crash-detection air bags in the mid-1990s. And now, MEMS technology is ubiquitous in automotive advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and will soon become the core enabling component in LiDAR sensors.

Still, given the many attributes of MEMS, why hasn’t its growth trajectory mirrored that of the semiconductor industry? MEMS, after all, offers unprecedented sensory intelligence in a small package, making it highly attractive for almost every application.

We’ve asked ourselves why MEMS hasn’t come farther, faster so many times over the years, and we’ve always come to the same conclusion: The slow growth of MEMS has nothing to do with its capabilities and everything to do with its manufacturing challenges. Solving those challenges was a catalyst for launching Omnitron Sensors.

At Omnitron we’ve developed a new topology for MEMS. We started by developing test structures and process steps with our foundry partners. We forged ahead to make significant improvements in capacitance to produce robust, rugged devices. The good news is that we’ve verified our process through fabrication, and are on the path to build hundreds of millions of low-cost, reliable, repeatable MEMS devices at commercial MEMS foundries.

Interested in learning more? On May 23, 2023, our co-founder & CEO, Eric Aguilar, will present Omnitron’s new topology for MEMS at MEMS & Sensors Technical Congress 2023, SEMI’s annual technical event on designing, building, and using sensors. MSTC is a phenomenal event for technical execs and engineers who want to learn about the latest innovations in MEMS technology. Register now.

If you can’t attend MSTC but would like more information on Omnitron, email us today.

Connect with CEO Eric Aguilar at MSTC 2023

And other MEMS & sensors industry technical execs

Omnitron Sensors Solves Reliability, Size, Cost Issues with LiDARs

New process for MEMS scanning mirror produces large field of view, speeds mass production

LOS ANGELES—November 30, 2022 — Omnitron Sensors, the pioneer in MEMS sensing technology for high-volume, low-cost markets, today validated its process for a fast, rugged, low-cost microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) scanning mirror, a new optical subsystem that meets the most demanding requirements of the LiDARs used in automotive advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), drones and robotics.

Targeting a LiDAR subsystems market predicted by Yole Intelligence, part of Yole Group, to reach $2B by 2027[i], Omnitron’s MEMS mirror will produce a 2-3X larger field of view than other MEMS mirrors used in long-range LiDARs. As a step-scanning mirror, Omnitron’s device is designed for rugged high-vibration automotive and aerial environments—a competitive advantage over the spinning mirrors offered by other vendors. In addition, Omnitron’s MEMS mirror is built to outperform older optical subsystems, including voice coils, spinning polygons, and Galvos—all of which are slower, bulkier, 10x-100x more expensive, and prone to failure.

“Our executive team has spent decades in sensor design, working on projects at Google (X) Wing avionics, Google Quantum, Tesla Model 3, US Navy Research Labs, and Lumedyne—which Google acquired during my tenure,” said Eric Aguilar, co-founder and CEO, Omnitron Sensors. “With so much untapped potential in MEMS sensors still before us, we saw how changing the process technology and packaging techniques—which we call a new topology for MEMS—produces measurable improvements in size, cost, robustness, reliability, manufacturability and time to market. Our MEMS scanning mirror for LiDARs proves out our IP, solving the most serious issues that plague today’s LiDARs for autonomous navigation. And based on the positive market reception we have received, we’re meeting a vital need for long-lasting, high-performing, rugged and cost-effective LiDAR platforms.”

With its MEMS process verified through fabrication, Omnitron Sensors is gaining the attention of investors. In Q4 2021, L’ATTITUDE Ventures invested $1.6M in seed-round funding to Omnitron and named the company L’ATTITUDE Latino Startup of the Year.

“I’ve spent 20 years in the wireless chip and sensors space, so I recognize an impressive technology when I see it,” said Sol Trujillo, general partner of L’ATTITUDE Ventures, an investment firm noted for its steadfast support of talented Latino/Latina entrepreneurs. “Omnitron’s starting point—the delivery of a step-scanning mirror with the potential to transform LiDARs for autonomous cars, drones, and mobile devices—is definitely impressive.

“Shaped by Eric Aguilar’s vision and technical acumen, Omnitron’s foundational IP in MEMS also has the potential to become a key enabler of robust and reliable smart-everything devices. These varied attributes illustrate why L’ATTITUDE believes in Omnitron’s growth potential.”

Solving MEMS manufacturing challenges

Manufacturing MEMS devices is notoriously difficult. Problems with size, reliability, durability and repeatability—and the fact that process technology is unique for each new MEMS device—make MEMS manufacturing expensive and slows design-to-delivery cycles. Omnitron’s core IP solves these challenges. As a new topology for MEMS, Omnitron’s IP rearranges manufacturing processes and supports them with new packaging techniques. This speeds volume production of a wide range of small, low-cost, precise MEMS sensors—from scanning mirrors and inertial measurement units (IMUs) to microphones, pressure sensors, and telecom switches—through established MEMS foundries.

For more information

To learn more about Omnitron’s new MEMS scanning mirror for LiDARs—as well as its new topology for MEMS, which solves the fundamental manufacturing challenges that have hindered the rapid mass-production of MEMS sensors—please contact us by email: info@omnitronsensors.com.

About L’ATTITUDE Ventures

L’ATTITUDE Ventures invests in early-stage (Seed to Series A) U.S. Latina(o) entrepreneurs who leverage technology to scale. The General Partners are Sol Trujillo, Oscar Munoz, Gary Acosta, Kennie Blanco, and Laura Moreno Lucas. Learn more at https://lat.vc/.

About Omnitron Sensors

Founded in 2019 by a core group of MEMS industry innovators, Omnitron Sensors has invented a new topology for MEMS—IP that improves device performance and reliability, and that streamlines assembly to produce MEMS sensors for price-sensitive, high-volume markets, such as ADAS, drones, robotics, smartphones, internet of things (IoT), and other intelligent connected electronics that are shipping by the hundreds of millions. Learn more at https://omnitronsensors.com.

The Omnitron Sensors logo is a registered trademark of Omnitron Sensors. All other product and company names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.

Press Contacts

Eric Aguilar, Omnitron Sensors

Email: eric[at]omnitronsensors.com

Maria Vetrano, Vetrano Communications

Email: maria[at]vetrano.com


[i] Source: ADAS Applications: LiDAR 2022 – Focus on Automotive and Industrial report, Yole Intelligence