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Article Excerpt
To more effectively develop and provide successful accelerometer products that are particularly suitable for an application or set of applications, it is very useful to view applications for accelerometers in terms of cost and performance requirements.
Colibrys SA (Neuchatel, Switzerland, ++41-32-720-5811)(www.colibrys.com), a developer and provider of high-quality MEMS (microelectromechanical systems) accelerometers and other MEMS-based devices (e.g., optical systems/components, radiation detectors), has created a very logical, useful, and effective segmentation of the overall accelerometer market into two essential areas: movement monitoring and event detection, and measurement and control. Colibrys, founded in January 2001 as a spin-off of CSEM (Neuchatel, Switzerland), maintains a U.S. subsidiary in Cary, NC (919-467-3402).
Colibrys is, moreover, providing and developing enhanced, high-performance MEMS bulk capacitive accelerometers. Such products are being designed to address key requirements and preferences of customers in the measurement and control market and to provide cost as well as performance (e.g., size, robustness, high shock resistance) advantages, compared to traditional micromechanical products (such as accelerometers that use quartz or silicon vibrating beams, micromechanical tilt sensors, geophones) in key segments of the measurement and control market (e.g., defense, aeronautics, civilian guidance, tilt/stabilization).
The movement monitoring and event detection arena for accelerometers includes such applications as automotive, as well as rate-responsive pacemakers (largely addressed by piezoelectric accelerometers), emerging consumer applications, shipping and handling (data loggers/shock recorders), machine condition monitoring, patient activity monitoring, etc. Movement monitoring and event detection applications typically have considerably less stringent performance requirements (for example, offset stability/working range requirements) than measurement and control applications. In movement monitoring and event detection applications, cost is a particularly crucial factor in determining the market opportunities for an accelerometer product.
For example, low-cost silicon micromachined accelerometers, primarily based on surface micromachined capacitive MEMS technology are used in very high volumes (100+ million units) in automotive applications (particularly air bag deployment). Very low-cost MEMS accelerometers also are finding opportunities in other cost-sensitive, potentially high-volume applications (such as, for example, tilt sensing in handheld devices).
Moreover, piezoelectric accelerometers are widely used in rate-responsive pacemakers to detect motion and translate such motion into an appropriate pacing rate based on the patient's level of physical activity.
Jean-Michel Stauffer, business...
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