Sensor Drift

Pedal to the metal

As I write this, I’m preparing to head out to Chicago for Sensors Expo 2007—a critical event for gauging the health and direction of the industry. If the preliminary information I’ve gotten is correct, the industry is racing ahead—literally.

At the show, PCB Piezoelectronics (Depew, NY) will feature a project it did with Andretti Green Racing (AGR, the group that won this year’s Indy 500) by showcasing a replica of AGR’s #7 Motorola IndyCar right on the floor. PCB is supplying AGR with dc-response accelerometers, torque sensors, load cells, and other test equipment.

I was hoping Tyco Electronics (Lowell, MA) would also be at the show so I could talk with them about the M/A COM radar sensors they’re supplying to Carnegie Mellon’s Tartan Racing Team. The school’s engineers are outfitting two 2007 Chevy Tahoes for autonomous urban driving.

The SUVs will be entered in DARPA’s Urban Challenge, to be held in the western United States this coming November. For the event, vehicles will drive through an urban course unaided by human input while obeying traffic laws, merging into moving traffic, and navigating traffic circles, stop signs, and intersections. The winner will be the first vehicle to negotiate 60 miles in under 6 hours.

MEMS in the factory

Frost & Sullivan (Palo Alto, CA) has released a report called Impact Analysis of MEMS Based Sensors and Actuators on Industrial Automation indicating that MEMS devices, particularly pressure sensors and gyros, are seeing slow but steady growth in industrial automation and, with intelligent distributed wireless monitoring and control coming on line, will likely play an increasingly vital role.