TDK Corp. has launched the InvenSense Sensor Partner Program to help designers accelerate their IoT designs using InvenSense MEMS sensors in a range of applications, including wearables, hearables, augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR) and robotics. The new InvenSense ecosystem partnerships will enable more engineers and developers to access its technologies with a range of reference designs, evaluation/development kits, modules and software algorithms.
Click for a larger image. (Source: TDK Corp.)
The partner program gives users—from ODMs and OEMS to developers, engineers and tech enthusiasts—the ability to work with a variety of InvenSense MEMS sensors, such as motion sensors, industrial motion modules, microphones, pressure sensors and ultrasonic sensors, in real-world examples using partner reference kits. The goal is to help them develop more accurate, reliable and efficient solutions, while also delivering a faster time to market and lower cost of ownership.
A big driver behind the creation of the partner program is the company’s new Mass Market Business Group, officially launched about four months ago. The goal of the group is to grow InvenSense’s business in the IoT long-tail mass market segments, comprised of mid- and small-sized customers, said Sahil Choudhary, director product marketing, IoT Sensors, at InvenSense, a TDK Group Company. He also is the InvenSense Partner Program Lead.
“Partners are a very key strategy to make this happen,” he continued. “Most of our partners are selling to the same channels and to the same distributors and they have strong value propositions, so why not build things together, collaborate and sell together to all of these IoT markets.”
Under the program, InvenSense is combining all its latest products, including microphones, time-of-flight sensors, consumer motion sensors and industrial motion sensor modules with its software and selling them to customers in a “more solution-centric approach to solve customer problems rather than going chip by chip to specific customers,” Choudhary said.
“For these mid- to small-sized customers, time to market is critical and they need something integrated quickly; they want software support; and they want an ecosystem that can take care of their development,” he added. “They don’t have all the resources. If they come to us as a sensor customer, we provide them with an evaluation kit at best, but what if they want to work within a Renesas ecosystem and then tie it with our software and our microphones, but with an AON wake-up mechanism.”
All of these ecosystem challenges that engineers are used to working on are solved by putting the sensors on all these different platforms, solving their biggest problems, which are time to integration, time to market and cost of ownership, he said. “We are building full solutions with partners and making life easier for customers.”
Chip and solution partners
Initial InvenSense Sensor Partner Program members include microcontroller (MCU)/system on chip (SoC), sensor and AI chipmakers as well as solution/software providers and distributors/design houses. The company expects to add new partners quarterly. Choudhary said they will be adding two more distributors in the next couple of months.
MCU/SoC partners include Renesas Electronics Corp., Ambiq Micro, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. and Alif Semiconductor. They provide a range of evaluation kits and boards for a number of applications.
InvenSense works with Renesas for a range of industrial, home electronics and IoT applications. The company’s MEMS sensors have been integrated on the Renesas Quick Connect platform as a sensor PMOD board (QCIoT-42688P), enabling users to select these sensors to prototype IoT solutions on Renesas MCU platforms. The AI Kit from Renesas also comes with the ICM-42670-P PMOD boards and drivers.
The InvenSense and Ambiq Micro partnership focus on ultra-low-power applications such as wearables and hearables. InvenSense motion sensors and microphones have been integrated in the energy-harvesting reference design and ultra-low-power voice activation kits with the latest Apollo510 SoC.
Collaborating on robotics applications, InvenSense is a sensor provider for Qualcomm Robotics Platforms and TDK has created the “TDK Mezzanine” board supported on all Qualcomm Robotics Platforms. This mezzanine platform allows customers to quickly evaluate and develop all the necessary sensor and motor controller technology needed for any robotic products.
TDK motion sensors and microphones have been integrated on an AK-E7-AIML AppKit, powered by Alif’s Ensemble E7 Fusion processor, enabling quick software development and evaluation for edge machine-learning use cases.
AI chip partners include Ambarella, AON Devices and Syntiant.
InvenSense partners with Ambarella, leveraging its AI vision SoCs to enable electronic image stabilization (EIS) for devices such as security cameras and video conference cameras as well as robotics simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) functions. Ambarella’s CVflow AI SoC evaluation kits, including the newest CV72S EVK, feature InvenSense motion sensors for evaluation and development of optical image stabilization (OIS) and EIS functions.
AON Devices and InvenSense collaborate on ultra-low-power voice activation, speech and sound detection applications with InvenSense microphones and motion sensors integrated in the AON 1100/1120 evaluation kits for quick evaluation and prototyping of voice-related applications on TWS, speakers and hearables
InvenSense works with Syntiant on acoustic and motion event detection applications. The company’s motion sensors and microphones are integrated on the RASynBoard, which is an ultra-low-power, edge AI/ML board, based on a Syntiant Neural Decision Processor and a Renesas RA6M4 host MCU
Currently, InvenSense works with one sensor partner, Isentek, leveraging its 3D Hall sensors for 9-axis IoT applications such as asset tracking, drones, navigation and e-bikes. InvenSense sensors are integrated on 9-axis evaluation kits, DK-42688-9x and DK-42670-9x, with the Isentek IST83063D hall sensor.
In the solution/software partner category, InvenSense partners with MindMics to produce infrasonic earbuds for artifact compression in in-ear heart health monitoring. The MM-TW-01WT infrasonic ear buds use the InvenSense 6-axis motion sensor for heart health monitoring while listening to music and taking calls.
TDK also leveraged its partnership with authorized distributor Avnet to build the RASYN (Renesas Syntiant) AI ML board for predictive maintenance, acoustic event and scene classification, as well as multi-sensor fusion applications
How will these partnerships work? Choudhary said the program offers a combination of models. For example, with Renesas, InvenSense manufactures and builds the boards, but they both sell the solutions at each of their websites. InvenSense supports all sensor questions related to the board, while Renesas fields all MCU and cloud-related questions.
In other cases, the partner takes full ownership. Avnet, for example, designed and built the Renesas Syntiant board for AI/ML applications, Choudhary said. InvenSense makes the sensor acquisition very easy by providing the sensor, software, the drivers, the libraries and the support in the building phase, but once done Avnet manages the technical support and all questions and inquiries, he added.
TDK will highlight a few of these partnerships at Sensors Converge, Santa Clara, CA, June 25-26 in TDK booth #920. Renesas will demonstrate its Quick Connect Studio platform, with the InvenSense SmartMotion ICM-42670-P for asset tracking and AI-based smart motion gestures with the AI Kits. Ambiq will demonstrate its HarvestKit including the InvenSense SmartMotion ICM-45605 MEMS sensor and the AP4+ VOS Kit including the InvenSense SmartSound T5838 microphone with acoustic activity detect and the Apollo510 SoC.
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