In the Product Design & Development Brainstorm, we talk with industry leaders to get their perspective on issues critical to the design engineering marketplace.
In this issue, we ask: What are some of the key technology trends that will shape the evolution of the wearables market?
Read more: Brainstorm: Wearables (Part 2)
My friend Mark DiPerri, a business management developer at Toshiba, told me years ago: The most successful wearable will be the one we are not aware we are wearing, seamless in its ability to track and modify our behavior.
MEMS & Sensors Industry Group’s (MSIG) membership is at the forefront of delivering intelligent sensing technologies that track our daily behavior and improve our lifestyle without our having to think about it. Valencell uses a combination of MicroElectroMechanical Systems (MEMS)/sensors and algorithms to deliver clinically validated accuracy, continuously monitoring numerous biometrics via an optomechanical sensor module tiny enough for an ear bud.
Other MSIG member companies use MEMS and sensors to quantify fitness/exercise and even sleep. The fitness tracker Jawbone UP3 is a sleek, low-profile wristband that captures resting and passive heart rate, and automatically detects detailed sleep stages (like Deep and REM) and workouts through an advanced multi-sensor platform. The multi-sensor platform includes a tri-axis accelerometer, bioimpedance sensors, and skin and ambient temperature sensors. Using this technology, UP3 delivers resting and passive heart rate, and will capture even more health data over time.
WiseWear houses the accelerometer in a beautiful bracelet that functions as an activity monitor and adds one more compelling feature: by tapping the bottom half of a WiseWear bracelet, the device sends a distress signal via text to a pre-selected group of contacts.
While such wearables have the potential to improve our quality of life by giving us insight into our personal health and well-being, there remain some challenges to the wearables market:
- Keeping data private and secure is a critical issue. We users will demand that data collected from our wearables (or any smart device) belongs to us, and only we users decide with whom (or what) to share our data.
- Proprietary devices fly in the face of the trend toward interoperability of what Apple, for example, is creating: a silo for tracking and monitoring data with its Watch. Having a wearable that is more universal and “open source” in the way that it captures and relays data could prove to be beneficial to users.
- Short battery life is a barrier to the growth of wearable technology. Yet, MicroGen Systems is aiming to alleviate this huge problem. Its novel piezoelectric MEMS (piezo-MEMS) vibrational energy harvester (pVEH) and piezo-sensor platform technology are at the core of its Micro-Power Generator (MPG) products (provide variable AC electricity output) and Power Cell products (offer AC to DC conversion and configurable fixed DC voltage electronics, and various types of energy storage). These MicroGen Systems’ products can power rechargeable batteries in wearables and other Internet of Things/wireless sensor applications. Plus, at just about 0.3 cm³ in size, MicroGen’s MPG devices are like low-cost miniaturized onboard “gas stations.”
As we move beyond batteries to energy harvesting modules and other emerging technologies that will free us from having to constantly power-up wearable devices, we are going to see a groundswell of activity in new wearables. Ultra-low-power electronics that hold their charges longer and transmission protocols that leverage ambient RF signals to power wireless devices will ease the power consumption issue with wearables.
Ultimately, we will see more self-powered, user-modifying wearables that are private, secure, and interoperable.
1. Wearable PPG for medical use
Decades of research on wearable PPG (photoplethysmography) has shown the ability to non-invasively track cardiovascular disease progression and to detect impending exacerbation, but only recently (via the advent of Valencell’s PerformTek sensor technology) has wearable PPG sensor technology achieved high enough accuracy and user comfort, and low enough power consumption, for use in consumer medical wearables. With this classic peanut butter + chocolate mixture of high-performance PPG sensing + established PPG assessments, the first round of seamless medical-grade consumer wearables will be entering the marketplace in the next three to four years.
2. “Periodic” biometric wearable use cases
The reality is that wearables do not need to be worn 24/7 in order to generate important user content that can be used for health assessments or assessing consumer behavior. For example, a “good enough” biometric sensor on the handle of a coffee pot can be used to determine how often one drinks coffee by sensing: a) who the person is, b) how often they pour coffee, and c) how their body responds to this behavior. The important aspect is not 24/7 use but rather reliable, routine, high-compliance touch-points with the wearable device. Biometric hearables – wearables worn at the ear – are likely to benefit the most from use cases that require simple routine touch-points throughout the week or month to reliably and seamlessly collect just enough data-points to make important health or behavioral assessments.
3. Battery/energy-harvesting technology
Notable startup and academic efforts have been directed towards low-power digital processing, shrinking batteries, energy harvesting, and safely increasing the energy density of batteries. On the academic front, the NSF + industry-funded ASSIST program, headquartered at NC State University, is driving innovation in all of these areas. And in the startup world, uBeam recently made headlines for yet another round of venture funding, now totaling more than $25 million, directed towards energy harvesting (“wireless charging”) via ultrasound.
4. Flexible, high-integration technology
Before the advent of wearables, most consumer electronics were boxy in nature, and rectangular electronic components and circuit boards were aptly suited for the job. But the most desirable wearable devices must frequently be curvy, thin, and pliable in order to accurately measure biometrics while remaining comfortable for the user, often requiring flexible components or interconnects. Flexible electronics have been commercially available for decades, but scalable flex solutions have remained too expensive for mass consumer markets. FlexTech Alliance, was recently granted $75 million from the U.S. Defense Department with the goal of making electronics more suitable, “stretchy,” and affordable for wearables.
5. Sophisticated speech recognition
Like flex technology, speech recognition technology has been commercially available for decades. But only now has this technology become sophisticated enough at a reasonable price point to not be so annoying. Hearables will exploit this technology to the fullest, as the ear sports the best location for not only biometric monitoring but also speech recognition and human-computer communication. With several recent announcements of major R&D and marketing investments in the area of hearables, look to Jabra (a consumer brand of GN Netcom) for leadership in this category.
Low-cost, durable sensors are essential to the wearables market. Coventor supplies software tools for designing MEMS-based sensors to companies and R&D organizations. From our customer engagements we see three trends emerging: commoditization of MEMS sensors, denser package-scale integration of MEMS, and the entry of mainstream CMOS foundries to the MEMS business. These trends bode well for the wearables market. Developers will be able to count on an established ecosystem for producing and integrating MEMS-based sensors that meet the form factor, performance, cost, and reliability requirements of wearables.
MEMS sensors are fabricated on silicon wafers using equipment and methods derived from large-scale CMOS manufacturing and therefore, have similar advantages over conventional macroscale sensors including: lower cost, smaller size, lower power requirements, and better performance (all desirable advantages, especially for wearables). Over the past two decades, shipments of MEMS sensors have grown from negligible to consumer electronics volume, due mainly to mobile devices, most of which now have at least a 6- or 9-axis inertial measurement unit (IMU) and one or more MEMS microphones. MEMS suppliers have, in some sense, become victims of their own success. MEMS market analyst, IHS, reported in late 2015 that total dollar revenue for MEMS pressure and motion sensors had actually fallen despite increasing unit shipments. This is clear evidence of a commoditization trend in MEMS, which is hard news for MEMS suppliers but great for MEMS consumers.
The widespread use of MEMS in mobile devices has created strong demand for denser integration of heterogeneous technologies such as MEMS, CMOS logic, memory, RF, and power conditioning. This is the second trend we see. Suppliers today offer highly integrated 6- and 9-axis IMUs. To see where this is going, we need only look at a ChipWorks’ teardown of the Apple Watch. It reveals that Apple integrated more than 30 die into a single package. Notably, a 6-axis MEMS IMU is one of the few components not included in that package. One can easily imagine that the IMU functionality will be more tightly integrated in a future version of the Apple Watch. The integration trend can only be good news for the wearables market, where form factor can be a make-or-break proposition.
The third trend is the entrance of mainstream CMOS foundries into the MEMS manufacturing business. This is partly a consequence of consolidation of the semiconductor industry as the investment needed to stay at the leading edge of CMOS technology has grown into the billions of dollars. Semiconductor manufacturers have a growing pool of older fabrication facilities that are potentially well-suited for MEMS manufacturing. These foundries see MEMS manufacturing as an attractive opportunity that leverages existing assets to address a new, higher growth market. Further, they believe they can address demands for increasing integration by offering one-stop shopping for multi-technology foundry services including CMOS, MEMS, and other technologies.
This blog originally appeared in the May/June 2016 print issue of Product Design & Development.