The age of all things sensing is coming

The appearance of Apple's next-generation iphone 6 and smart watch has given the world's many followers of Apple handsets a reason to queue overnight. To give the iphone more and more powerful features, not only is more and more powerful chips, more important is the mobile phone more and more sophisticated sensors.

A few years ago, when Jobs took the iphone "Shake Flash" to get it to react, the smartphone era really started. A few years later, the mobile phone from a communication tool into a people inseparable from the partner.

The phone has such a "magic", is a touch screen, gyroscope, accelerometer, such as a wide range of sensors.

--touch screen is a capacitive touch sensor. Used to feel the position and movement of mobile phones, gyroscopes and acceleration sensors. When you answer the phone and attach your ear to the screen, the infrared proximity sensor is the one that darkens the screen and closes the touchscreen. According to the ambient light intensity automatically adjusts the brightness of the screen, is the ambient light sensor. There are, of course, "compass"-magnetoresistive sensors for navigation, and cameras made with photoelectric sensors.

At the September 9 press conference, the biggest bright spot was Apple's breakthrough in sensor use. The IPhone 6 phone has increased the number of sensors to assemble the action of the sensor, can be used to measure the altitude of the air pressure sensor, fingerprint payment can be achieved near-field communication module and fingerprint sensor. The four-ring sensor behind the iwatch is the principle of reflecting on the skin through LED light to determine the movement of blood vessels and to detect the wearer's pulse.

More than just mobile phones, in automobiles, household appliances, wearable equipment, and industrial automation, more and more sensors have become the "eyes and ears" of machines.

What the general public knows very little about is the networking of things that will bring greater changes to people's lifestyles, and its core underlying technology is also sensors. Scientists predict that sensors will be like "the body's facial features", in the future filled with various fields and space.

Now, with the advent of the internet of things, all kinds of sensors are becoming ubiquitous neurons, the global demand for sensors is beginning to show an explosion of growth. But, on the eve of this feast, the industry regrets that China seems to be behind the time.

How do Chinese companies get a slice of the benefits of their "thick-fat" profits from Bosch in Germany and the US Honeywell and Freescale sensors?

Imitate the facial features of human body

"The sensor is like a person's facial features. "Li Xinhin, director of the National Key Laboratory of micro-system sensing technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said," Human beings in the computer era, solve the brain simulation problem, the equivalent of 0 and 1 to achieve the digital information, the use of Boolean logic to solve the problem; now it's the post-computer era, and

Sensors (transducer, sensor) are often called transducers, which convert other information into electrical signals. It is usually composed of sensitive components and conversion elements, can be detected by the detection of information, according to a certain law transformation into electrical signal output to meet the information transmission, processing, storage, display, recording and control requirements. It can be said that the sensor allows the object to have a sense of touch, taste and smell, so that the object slowly become alive.

The development of sensors was first driven by industrial automation.

For the purpose of improving efficiency, industrial production began to control the parameters of each production node in the central control room, including flow, level, temperature and pressure four parameters, which gave birth to the development of sensors. This trend began in the 70 's and is now the most widely used form of sensors.

Dong Yonggui, a professor of precision equipment at Tsinghua University, told Caixin reporter that before the concept of the Sensor "appeared", there were sensors in the early instruments, but in the form of a component in the whole set of instruments. So, in China before 1980, the textbook introduced the sensor is called "Electric measurement of electricity".

The appearance of the sensor concept is the result of the gradual trend of the measuring instrument to modularization. Since then, the sensor from the whole set of instrument system independent, as a function of the device for research, production and sales.

According to the working principle of the sensor, it can be divided into two kinds: physical sensor and chemical sensor. Physical sensors are applied to physical effects, the small changes in the measured signal are converted into electrical signals, such as piezoelectric effect, magnetostrictive phenomenon, ionization, polarization, thermoelectric, photoelectric, magneto-electric and other effects.

Chemical sensors are chemical adsorption, electrochemical reaction and other phenomena as causal relationship of the sensor. In recent years, biological sensors have been developed using various biological properties to detect and identify chemical constituents in the organism.

In Dong Yonggui's view, the sensor is not strictly a purely disciplinary direction, because all disciplines have research sensors. New sensors, based on newly discovered physical phenomena and chemical effects, are actually two development of other professional basic research results.

He said that with the rapid development of electronic circuit technology, more and more measurement problems are focused on the sensor link. Finally, the performance of the sensor determines the performance of the whole measuring instrument. "This is the most important driver for sensor development. ”

"Imitate human's facial features", just a comparison of the sensor image of the argument. Sensor technology developed relatively mature, or industrial measurement often used in such as force, acceleration, pressure, temperature and other physical quantities. For the real person's feelings, including vision, hearing, touch, smell, taste, from the sensor point of view, most are not very mature.

"Visual, auditory can be regarded as physical quantities, relatively good, tactile is relatively poor, as for smell and taste, due to the measurement of biochemical measures, the working mechanism is more complex, far from reaching the stage of technical maturity." "he said.

The market for sensors is actually driven by applications. For example, in the chemical industry, the pressure, flow sensor market is quite large, in the automotive industry, speed, acceleration and other sensor market is very large. The acceleration sensor based on microelectronic mechanical System (MEMS) technology is now more mature, the demand for the automotive industry is not.

MEMS (Micro-electro-mechanical Bae) is a micro-device or system that can be produced in batches, which integrates micro-mechanical structure, micro-sensor, micro-actuator, communication equals one. Its small size, light weight, low cost, low power consumption, high reliability, suitable for mass production, easy integration and implementation of intelligent, but also to achieve some traditional mechanical sensors can not achieve the function.

Google has spent five years developing driverless cars. The cars have no accelerator pedal, brake pedal and rearview mirror, but they control the operation of the car through internal sensors and on-board computers.

With the help of all kinds of sensors, the Internet in the past belongs to people, extending and extending to any object and object.

In the 1999, the International Conference on Mobile Computing and networking in the United States put forward, "the sensor network is another development opportunity facing mankind in the next century"; In 2003, the United States "Technology Review" proposed that the sensor network technology will be the future change people's lives of the top ten technology.

2005 International Telecommunication Union (ITU) released ITU Internet Report 2005: IoT of Things. The report notes that the ubiquitous "Internet of Things" era of communication is imminent, with all the world's objects moving from tyres to toothbrushes, from homes to paper towels, to the Internet for active exchange. Radio frequency identification (RFID), sensor technology, nanotechnology, intelligent embedding technology will be more widely used.

Forrester, the US authoritative consultancy, predicts that by 2020, the world's business of the Internet of things will reach 30:1 compared to people's communications business, so the "Internet of Things" is called the next trillion-tier communications business.

"It used to be that we were looking for clients to recommend Machine-to-machine (machine to machine) business, and now customers are looking for us and whether they can provide the right solution." "Sean Horan, director of business development, Machine-to-machine Business Solutions for the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (At&t), told Caixin News reporter.

Machine-to-machine is to connect things with things, in order to achieve real-time communication between people and objects, objects and objects, is the most direct way to achieve the internet of things.

Machine-to-machine technology can ensure the safety of expensive goods during transportation, can monitor the location and temperature of refrigerated containers in transportation, can diagnose the status of engine remotely, and can accept navigation and traffic information in real time.

According to At&t's assessment, the number of global machine-to-machine connections will reach 50 billion by 2020. In fact, with the maturing of Machine-to-machine solutions, the cost of communication and sensing equipment has fallen, the internet of things will gradually penetrate into various industries.

The global interconnection of machines, such as automobiles, machinery and large equipment, utilizes new analytical and business intelligence solutions to extract more valuable information from massive amounts of data and provide more value-added services to customers.

"The most core of the internet of things, the most basic is the sensor." Ye Tanchun, director of China Research and Development Center for Internet of things, said that without sensors there would be no way to let machines automatically perceive information. It is precisely because of the sensor to join the network, the concept of the Internet of things was raised.

Thick-accumulated thin hair of foreign enterprises

The rapid development of sensors in technology and function, on the one hand from the development of computer, testing and other technologies, on the other hand, from the application of the needs of the drive.

Motorola's semiconductor division emerged from Motorola in 2004 to set up Freescale Semiconductor, which designs and manufactures embedded semiconductors for the automotive, consumer, industrial, network and wireless markets. In just a few years, Freescale became one of the largest semiconductor companies in the world.

Freescale's Semiconductor (Freescale) sensor and consumer electronics marketing manager Gao Xiaolong said that the source of interconnected devices in IoT is usually one or more sensors that transform the signals of the physical environment into digital data. With the decreasing cost of sensors and actuators, especially the application of MEMS technology, it is more feasible to make a lot of ideas of internet of things.

The biggest reason for Freescale's rapid success is to hold thousands of patents from Motorola. Some of these patents may have come from decades ago, but their heavy accumulations have finally traded in recent years.

Freescale part of the important product is all kinds of sensors. The accelerometer, which is used for navigation and motion capture, satisfies the need of medical equipment, navigation equipment and mobile terminal to the high precise electronic compass function.

In recent years, in the automotive field, to detect the impact of falling, tilt, motion, positioning, vibration and impact of the changes in the force of the acceleration sensor, is widely used in the airbag system, electronic stability control system, electronic parking brake system solutions.

Based on the MEMS pressure sensor, which can measure atmospheric pressure, it can also measure BP and tyre pressure, providing a powerful solution for home appliances, medical, consumer electronics, industrial control and automotive markets.

Motion sensors, combined with pressure sensors, can be used to monitor bedridden patients, measure respiration and heart rate, and even call the nurse's station for help when the patient tries to get out of bed.

The use of MEMS sensors is not limited to mobile phones, computers, automobiles, navigation and even electric irons, sports equipment can be seen everywhere its figure, such as the Navigator in the absence of satellite signals in the tunnel to determine whether it can be driven by the inertia trajectory, notebook computer in the fall can automatically open the hard disk protection program The electric iron shuts off the power supply and so on at high temperature flat.

"In 2008, Jobs took his mobile phone and shook Flash, which brought about an explosion in the acceleration sensor market," he said. "Wuxi Sense Core Semiconductor (Consensic) Deputy general manager Zhang to finance new reporter said. But, in his view, the market for pressure sensors will be even bigger.

Pressure sensors, he says, differ from other sensors in that market applications are highly fragmented. The pressure sensor has been developed in the 70 's, and has been used in every corner of the world for decades, but it is not so widely known because it is far from people's life. Pressure sensors are widely used in tire pressure monitoring, hydraulic monitoring and some high-end appliances, and will be used in intelligent products in the future.

As technology progresses, the cost of pressure sensors is lowered sufficiently, and the use of high-end sensors used in military and industrial applications will eventually be applied to intelligent terminals.

"Many of the sensors used to be on airplanes, and are now used on mobile phones, such as accelerometer, magnetometer, barometer, and gyroscope," he said. "With the application of the barometer on the iphone 6 and iwatch, the market for the pressure sensor is open, and there will be a big increase in the future, with an increase of more than 1 billion dollars over the next five years," said Zhang.

With a barometer, the altitude at which people are located can be accurately identified; For indoor navigation, it can be used for floor recognition, when the car navigation, you can tell whether the car is in the elevated or elevated, and as the barometer more into the mobile terminal, you can make everyone become a meteorological terminal, Personalized weather forecasts.

With the progress of materials science, people can make a variety of new sensors. For example, a polymer film made of a temperature sensor, optical fiber can be made into pressure, flow, temperature, displacement and other sensors, made of ceramic pressure sensor.

' Now we see sensors that are integrated more intelligently and need to integrate sensors more closely with SCM and digital networking products, ' says Gao Xiaolong. Sensors require more layered intelligence to address power saving, security, and connectivity issues. As the coming wave of IoT applications, sensor systems become more complex, more contextual, and more environmentally aware. "Luckily, all of us in it will feel more interesting," he said. ”

Li Xinhin that, from the current capacity of sensors, some places still do not have the ability to facial features, but some ability to exceed, such as monitoring the explosive sensor. From the development trend of the sensor, we need to solve the problem of power consumption, volume, cost and life, so that the sensors are smaller, cheaper and less power, and everyone can have a large amount of possession.

Now Bosch, Italy-France Semiconductor, Honeywell, Freescale, Hitachi and other traditional electronics manufacturing giants, all of the sensor as the main growth point of the future business, the current output value of MEMS sensors around 20 billion U.S. dollars, but the growth is very rapid.

"Now many companies are interested in sensors, the most important thing is how to design a product, how to allow users to accept the services brought by the sensor." "he said.

"Every year 20% of industrial automation sensors are replaced, which is not the greatest market." He said, the greatest is the history of the market has never been, who did not think Gyroscope can be used in mobile phones, the original did not dare to have this hope. But the Apple is realized, this is the more precious first bucket of gold.

Teeth”

This year, the world's major consumer electronics giants have to seize the smart glasses and smart watches as a representative of wearable equipment market.

Sensors have become one of the most important components of the wearable equipment industry chain in the pursuit of this wearable device.

At the beginning of 2014, Google announced that it was developing a blood glucose monitoring contact lens that could be used to monitor blood glucose levels by using a micro-glucose sensor and a wireless transmitter, which could help patients get rid of their blood glucose meter by analyzing their tears. Intel has also announced a $100 million acquisition of the basis Science company, which can monitor heart rate, blood flow and heat loss.

In early September, Beddit, a sleep sensor company in Helsinki, Finland, announced that the latest round of funding had been $8 million trillion.

The company's sensors detect a person's heartbeat through the wearer's heart contractility and detect the rhythm of the breathing with chest wall motions. The chest band measured the user's bedtime, waking time, sleep time, heart rate, sleep quality and breathing movement, including snoring.

Common wearable physical sensor products, including smartphones and smart watches that monitor heart rates, a chest-band sensor that more accurately measures heart rate and cardiovascular indicators, and a pedometer for measuring movement rhythms, speeds, and distances, on running shoes or insoles. With the development of electronic components and new clothing materials, sensors began to integrate with the garment, is applied to body impact detection, biological signal monitoring, biomechanical monitoring and biofeedback.

With the development of non implantable electrochemical and biosensors, wearable sensors can be used to detect the gaps in real-time monitoring of disease and pharmacodynamics by detecting the body fluids such as tears, saliva, sweat, and skin tissue fluids.

Google's blood glucose monitoring contact lenses are used to monitor and manage diabetes through the correlation between tear and glucose levels in the blood.

The saliva sensors that used to be embedded in dentures have now been improved into a totem on the teeth and combined with remote wireless data transmission to reflect human emotions, hormones, nutrition and metabolism in real time.

In addition, sweat, skin tissue fluid, and even urine can reflect the health of the body of substances. For these indicators, large and small companies are developing a variety of light small and accurate sensors, for real-time detection of human health conditions created.

At the end of July this year, the millet bracelet, which is priced at only 79 yuan, subverts the hand ring market. Millet Eco-chain product director Xiayong told Caixin News reporter, this is already the cost price of the bracelet.

Millet hand Ring The most important cost from the Bluetooth chip and acceleration sensor, can achieve mobile phone unlock, exercise monitoring, sleep quality monitoring and other functions. The accelerometer, which comes from the American Adi Adno Semiconductor, is known as the lowest-power motion sensor and the most energy-saving military motion sensor. According to the company, three of the same sensors were used on military helmets in the United States.

Before entering the consumer electronics market, the accelerometer has been widely used in automotive electronics, mainly in car body control, safety system and navigation, typical applications such as automobile airbag (Airbag), ABS anti-lock braking system, electronic Stability Program (ESP), electric control suspension system, etc.

In early September this year, at the Biological data symposium held in Shanghai, Professor Yang Ruifu of the Institute of Microbiology and Epidemiology of the Academy of Military Medical Sciences pointed out that the POCT (Point-of-care testing) rapid detection technology based on microfluidic, biosensor and MEMS technology made the detection equipment more and more miniaturized, Can let testing out of the laboratory, to the field, car and family.

POCT can be interpreted as a test anytime and anywhere, because this technology is fast and simple, high efficiency, low cost, short inspection cycle, less sample dosage, and the reagent is stable and easy to save and carry, has been widely used in clinical, and even self testing.

One example is that the 2013 Top ten medical breakthroughs, which were selected by Time magazine, included a home pregnancy test that showed how long it took to get pregnant. The principle of the test device, in layman's terms, is to detect the level of human chorionic gonadotropin levels that can be done in the original hospital and become a biosensor.

The biosensors used in POCT are analyzed and detected by specific biological detectors, such as ion selective electrodes, substrate specificity electrodes and conductance sensors. This kind of technology is the product of the combination of enzyme chemistry, immunology chemistry, electrochemistry and computer technology. Now there are not only miniature blood glucose detectors, miniature sequencing instruments, and even a variety of drugs that can be used to detect patients ' condition in real time, and to selectively release the pill.

In Gao Xiaolong's view, we are now exposed to only the tip of the iceberg of wearable equipment. Advanced sensors will be integrated into many areas, such as clothing, baby diapers and Band-Aid. He believes that improving sensor size and power consumption without affecting resolution is the first step in introducing more applications. Other cool sensor applications coming soon include intelligent dispensing systems and medical devices that improve the quality of life for patients, robotic home appliances, and automotive active safety systems.

China sensor gap

Sensor, as the frontier Technology of modern science and technology, is regarded as one of the three pillars of modern information technology, and it is also recognized as the most promising High-tech industry at home and abroad.

However, as the sensors usher in the spring, the Chinese public still seems to be the feast of foreign semiconductor giants.

Industry insiders believe that, although China's sensor market is developing rapidly, but the local sensor technology and the world level is still a big gap.

This gap, on the one hand, is the sensor in the perception of information lag behind, on the other hand, the sensor itself in the intelligent and networked technology lag behind. Because there is not enough large-scale application, the domestic sensor is not only low in technology, but also high in price, it is difficult to be competitive in the market.

Professor Dong Yonggui, China has been focusing on sensor technology since 1980. After years of efforts, the development level of sensor research is relatively good. However, in the production of technical progress is not very ideal, many sensor technology, in fact, the domestic laboratory research level is not very poor, unfortunately not fully utilized, did not translate into a market for mature products.

He said that the study of sensor technology requires a relatively long period of input, a sensor research and development, to 6 years-8 years to mature, generally Chinese enterprises can not withstand such a long period. Chinese companies are more difficult to withstand failure, and the risk of failure in sensor research is high.

According to Dong Yonggui's visit to Japan, the Japanese Enterprise support research and development, many are not products, but the enterprise can withstand, 10 items in as long as 2-3 can be turned into products on the line.

"In contrast, many of our businesses are ready to take what other people have." Dong Yonggui said the idea was problematic, including our desire to bring in ready-made foreign talent. "are not prepared to raise fish, but to catch a fish." ”

Compared to the relatively large equipment, the sensor in the process of product investment needs are generally not very large, so more suitable for small business investment. In this regard, China should have an advantage. However, this is also a shortcoming if considered from another aspect.

One feature of the sensor industry is that the sensor itself has a high technical content, but the price of a single sensor is generally not high. One result of this feature is that, while the technology added value of the sensor is high, it is difficult to produce a significant output value by relying solely on sensors.

According to Professor Dong Yonggui's analogy, the sensor is a bit like the "narratives" in Chinese medicine, its function is very important, but the real scale still need to rely on the whole drug to do. Many foreign sensor companies have a breakthrough in some kind of sensor, and will soon have relevant measuring instruments developed.

"Domestic enterprises in the follow-up technology research and development capacity is relatively poor." "he said.

Li Xinhin to Caixin reporter said, in fact, we are not a lot of research, but one to the industrialization of many problems, although many original innovation abroad or take us away, more important is the pace of industrialization is too slow. Technically, China's micro-manufacturing capacity is very large, easy to achieve batch manufacturing, but the creative or poor, if the ability to improve the design, capacity can play a greater role.

Wuxi Core Semiconductor products focus on the field of pressure sensors, its director Zhang introduced, domestic do similar products more, but the real scale of only one or two, because the product type is very many, the test is more difficult, the investment is big, the industrial chain is very long, manual testing is difficult to meet consumer electronic customer requirements.

"To meet the demand for large applications, must go to standardized testing equipment, the process is very good, investment will be very large." "Zhang said.

Moreover, under the patent protection mechanism in China, the key technology developed by the sensor is often presented a kind of "know-how" nature, after being plagiarized, it is hard to say clearly, the enterprise also cannot fight a lawsuit. Although there are MEMS sensor enterprises, but are commissioned to process, do not get the processing enterprises to do their own, the current enterprise innovation system has a big problem.

In 2012, a senior domestic sensor field said at a conference, why the development of China's sensor industry is not good, that is, the lack of leadership to the State Council to lecture leaders, the field of research and development of a long time, not significant enough, itself is very small things, based on the physical phenomenon is decades, a century ago discovered.

The researchers point out that such research is actually very hard, such as an accelerometer, used in the oil industry to measure seismic waves, based on principles that the Soviet Union put forward decades ago, but until the expert was in the United States after the break-up of the Soviet Union, the product was applied.

"The more we need thick and thin hair and alpine, the bigger the gap." "Dong Yonggui that there is a further widening trend now.

(Responsible editor: Lvguang)