Smart Industry 2/2018

Smart Solutions MEMS
MEMS
Building a
smarter sensor
Sensors have been around in industrial environments for a long time as
critical elements in process and environmental control. Often, sensors have
been built with specific applications and operating conditions in mind
and they are relatively costly and time-consuming to manufacture.
n By Andrea Onetti*
MEMS (micro-electronicmechanical
system)
sensors were originally
designed to replace or
upgrade some of these industrial
sensors with something smaller
and more power-efficient. However,
MEMS quickly took off in consumer
applications such as gaming and
smartphones thanks to their size,
performance, and low power consumption;
but they also took off because
they can be manufactured in
very high quantities. In the past decade,
tens of billions of sensors have
been shipped into high-volume
consumer applications.
Now MEMS are coming back to industrial
applications as one of the key
enablers of smart industry trends like
Industry 4.0 and IIoT. As industrial systems
become more automated and
autonomous, and with the proliferation
of artificial intelligence and big
data processing capabilities, the need
is growing for various types of sensors
that can provide critical data on
processes, machine conditions, and
safety; factories can use them to become
safer and more collaborative for
the people working in them.
In industrial settings, accuracy is key.
Whether temperature and pressure
control in a manufacturing process,
inclination measurement for equipment
installation, or vibration measurement
for condition monitoring,
accuracy is indispensable. To build a
great, accurate sensor that fits an application
requires three key items:
• First, the ability to measure a certain
phenomenon – movement,
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*Andrea Onetti is Analog MEMS Sensor Group Vice President – MEMS Sensor Division General Manager at STMicroelectronics.