Quality Alchemist (品質煉金術師): HKSTP APAC Innovation Summit 2016 Series

2016年8月25日星期四

HKSTP APAC Innovation Summit 2016 Series – Sensors

The APAC Innovation Summit series was a flagship innovation conference of Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks Corporation (HKSTPC) and the topic entitled “Sensors” was held on 25 August 2016. APAC Innovation Summit (“AIS” in short and formerly known as InnoAsia) aimed to provide an exchange platform on the trend of specific technology sectors. In the beginning, Dr. HL Yiu (Head of Electronic Cluster, HKSTP) gave a welcome speech and he pointed out that sensor played an important role in different field under smart city and robotic. He hope todays keynotes would give some insight for all participants.

The first speaker was Prof. William C. Tang (University of California, Irvine) and his topic entitled “Micro-electromechanical Systems (MEMS) Technology and Applications”. Firstly, he reviewed IEEE publication from 1995 to 2015. He observed that the publication in Circuits decreased in percentage and Sensors increased as much as Circuits in 2015. Then he briefed the MEMS advantages included Integration, Miniaturization and Batch Fabrication. It included Anisotropic Wet Etching of Silicon, Surface Micromachining, Deep Reactive Ion Etching (DRIE), TI Digital Light Processor and Accelerometer.

Prof. Tang briefed some applications on sensor included Automative Sensor and Smart Phone Sensor. However, Biomedical Applications would be the one of key areas using Sensor. Those application for better tools on Drug Delivery, Monitoring, Bio-analyses, Prosthesis and Minimally Invasive Surgery. Bio-sensor separated In-vitro and In-vivo Sensors.

The second speaker was Ms. Clarie Troadec (Yole Développement) and her presentation named “MEMS & Sensors for Smart Cities”. In the beginning, Ms. Troadec briefed her company’s business models included “Consulting and Analysis”, “Reports”, “Financial Services” and “Media”. MEMS & Sensors was one of their 30 analysts operated areas. She said Smart City was key facts to employ sensors. The definition of Smart City was “Resilient, Safe, Sustainable and More Connected” (The United Nations Economic Commission for Europe - UNECE).

Ms. Troadec introduced MEMS was a semiconductor technology thus enabling miniaturization and lower cost manufacturing of existing products. She predicted gas sensors as the next MEMS success. Then she summarized the technologies of IoT as following diagram.

After that she identified three important hubs for Smart Cities included Inertial, Environmental and Optical. However, she focused on Environmental hub using different gas sensors because she believed the gas sensors became more and more important due to global air quality deterioration, new regulations and new technology development that combined multiple sensors in a single package.

During the tea break, some incubatees demonstrated their sensor product such as eNano.

The third speaker was Dr. Mike Daneman (InvenSense, Inc) and his topic was “Fabless Model for the MEMS Industry”. Firstly, he reviewed MEMS markets by applications included Automotive, Consumer, Industrial and Telecom. It was found that Consumer product employed in highest percentage. His company was founded in 2003. They had unique technology and Intellectual Property (IP).

Then Dr. Daneman introduced their Fabless Business Model and they employed TSMC for twice shuttles per year. He told us the advantages of wafer-level integration included Low Parasitics, Minimize Routing & External Interconnect, Wafer Level Sealing/Packaging, Testing and Designed for Test. The benefit of application from CMOS integration included High Sensitivity, Complexity, Integration, Low Cost and Small Size.

Finally, Dr. Daneman briefed InvenSense Shuttle Processess included Standard (SOI) Shuttle and Piezo Shuttle. He summarized that InvenSense Shuttle was bringing the CMOS fabless model to MEMS industry so as to increase MEMS value through system integration and reduce time to market.

Prof. Muhammad Mustafa Hussain (King Abdullah University of Science & Technology, Saudi Arabia) was the fourth speaker and his presentation topic was “Skin Like Multi-Sensory Platform for Bio and Environmental Applications”. He said his research on smart skin was inspired from human skin functionalities. Prof. Hussain said the trend would be the development of E-skin towards Paper Electronics.

He quoted one example from Advanced Materials’ Paper Skin – 3D Multi-Sensory Platform. The sensors would include Temperature, Humidity, pH, Pressure, Force / Tactile Sensing, Flow & Proximity Sensing, Matrix Simultaneous, etc.

Finally, he summarized the E-skin sensors characteristics and found that it had higher performance and functionality per cost compared with existing electronic artificial skin. He concluded paper skin was the first demonstrated an affordable and customizable lightweight health monitor artificial skin.

Prof. Wen J. Li (City University of Hong Kong) was the last speaker and his presentation entitled “Intelligent Sensors for Cyber Physical Human Systems”. In the beginning, Prof. Li introduced himself with research experience in CUHK, Shenzhen Academy of Robotics and CityU. Then he mentioned the important characteristics of Cyber Physical Systems (CPS) which directly connected between the physical and digital world with new systems functions through information, data, and function integration. (e.g. Google car) Then he introduced Cyber Physical Cities and one testing city was in Longgang which was intelligent and green city.

Then Prof. Li briefed the future factories should be IT systems built around machines, storage systems and supplied that were linked up as cyber-physical systems (CPS). He also quoted Cyber Physical Farms as example.

Prof. Li also mentioned different example employed CPS and one of interested sampel was Palpation Sensing Robotic Han to measure rate and regularity of human pulse for simulating Chinese Medicine Practitioner (CMP) fingers. Lastly, Prof. Li summarized that the development of Cyber Physical Systems technology was a key driver for the “4^th Industrial Revolution” and new paradigms for industrial and manufacturing engineering would be created. MEMS and Nanotechnology were fundamentally important he said. In future, highly interdisciplinary among robotics, sensors, modelling, virtual reality, wireless communication, system engineering, control, computer science and biomedical engineering would be new direction of CPHS research and education.