Tag: MEMS

Omnitron Sensors Selects Silex Microsystems for Reliable MEMS Scanner for LiDAR

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MEMS IP company works with premier MEMS foundry to commercialize first product

LOS ANGELES—September 7, 2023 — Omnitron Sensors, the pioneer in MEMS sensing technology for high-volume, low-cost markets, today announced that it will work with Silex Microsystems on the manufacture of its microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) scanner for LiDAR.

“We’re seeing massive demand for low-cost and reliable LiDAR from manufacturers of automotive ADAS, drones and other robotic systems,´ said Eric Aguilar, co-founder and CEO, Omnitron Sensors. “Our selection of Silex Microsystems—which is the world’s largest pure-play MEMS foundry—signifies our market-readiness to deliver the first MEMS scanner that meets the accuracy, reliability, size, cost and volume requirements of LiDAR in diverse applications.”

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 slow 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.

“Omnitron’s new topology for MEMS—which features the clever rearrangement of silicon process steps and a new packaging method—is a major step forward for the microelectronics industry because it mitigates the manufacturing complexity that has limited the growth of MEMS to date,” said Aguilar. “By leveraging the standard tools and processes already found in the Silex fab, Omnitron clears the way for robust, reliable and affordable MEMS devices that are delivered to market quickly and at high volume.

For more information

To learn more about Omnitron Sensors, please contact us by email: info@omnitronsensors.com or via the Omnitron website.

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. 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

Transforming Optical Scanning through MEMS for ADAS, Autonomous Navigation, VR/AR/MR

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The optical scanner is at the heart of the perception systems we’re increasingly using in cars, in drones, and in virtual reality (VR)/augmented reality (AR)/mixed-reality (MR) headsets. In automotive, we may see a combination of cameras, LiDAR and radar used in advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), such as automatic braking, lane-departure warnings, and collision avoidance. That’s typically the case for autonomous navigation in cars and drones as well. The optical systems in VR/AR/MR headsets feature a display—such as an OLED or LED, and cameras; and one day soon LiDAR may augment or replace those cameras. Whatever their underlying scanning technology, perception systems require micro-optical components that are accurate, reliable, affordable and available in mass-production volumes.

With so many different types of micro-optical components available for perception systems, how can designers choose the best components for their specific applications? As with any important engineering decision, you have to balance what’s most important to your customer.

Chances are, you’re looking for a compelling set of features at an affordable price point.

If you’re designing perception systems for ADAS, autonomous navigation or AR/VR/MR, it’s time to start looking at the next generation of LiDAR sensor. Because the LiDAR of old—fragile, large, expensive, susceptible to environmental conditions, and difficult to maintain—is a thing of the past. Leveraging a new topology for MEMS, Omnitron Sensors is introducing a small, low-cost, rugged and reliable step-scanning sensor for LiDAR. Omnitron’s MEMS step-scanning sensor makes a world of a difference in autonomous navigation—interpreting the real-world physical environment that a car perceives in 3D, not 2D.

And that’s just scanning the surface of what Omnitron Sensors can do. Its next-gen LiDAR sensor perceives the environment accurately in all lighting and weather conditions. It can decipher between stationary and moving objects, is immune to high-vibration and temperature variation, and it’s affordable in mass-production quantities.

Learn more about Omnitron’s MEMS step-scanning sensor for LiDAR at Micro Optics 2023, a virtual conference that takes place August 1-3, 2023.

Omnitron Sensors Co-founder & CEO Eric Aguilar will present “Transforming Optical Scanning: MEMS Topology for Low-Cost, Small, and High-Performance Scanners,” at 12:15 p.m. EDT on August 3, 2023.

There’s still time to register. Or, if you’re not able to attend Micro Optics 2023, please email Omnitron Sensors today.

Innovation in MEMS—and Elsewhere—Starts with Market Disruption

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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?

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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.