Designing New-Age Electronics

By Tom Kevan

Everyone wants to know what the future holds in store, and I’m no different. In a recent conversation, I asked Dave Blakely, director of Technology Strategy for IDEO, a leading global design consultancy, about the future of electronics and the design practices that build them. By picking apart the technologies and components of today’s smartphones, he was able to sketch a vision of the future and outline some best practices for design engineers. The roots of the predictions and suggested practices are changes in attitude, developments in technology, and evolving expectations.

Key components of sensor fusion are the algorithms that process the disparate data streams into actionable information. This block diagram shows how a sensor fusion algorithm was implemented in LabVIEW by a design team at Rensselear Polytechnic Institute. The approach used complementary filtering to fuse inclinometer and MEMS gyroscope signals.

Multitasking Mobiles
Start by considering today’s smartphones. Mobile is in great demand. The new generation of users doesn’t think of mobile phones as dedicated devices. Instead, they see them as flexible systems that can be customized with accessories and software downloads to perform a growing range of new functions. As these phones have gotten “smarter,” they have displaced traditional stand-alone products. For example, people don’t travel with portable alarm clocks anymore. They use their cell phone.

But as popular as mobile has become, there is a limit to the number of devices people are willing to carry. In short, they want a wide range of features on as few devices as possible.

  What does this mean to the design engineer? Instead of seeing the smartphone as one type of mobile electronic device, engineers need to see it as an example of a possible platform to host diverse new functionality. After all, smartphones already have the necessary building blocks, such as powerful processors, internal memory, power sources, and a growing variety of input devices, such as GPS and sensors. In many cases,  designers don’t have to re-invent the wheel. Early in the design process, they should seriously consider leveraging existing mobile platforms rather than create dedicated devices.

“Our attitudes as designers should be: Let’s be humble and leverage existing platforms rather than reflexively designing our own custom platform,” says Blakely. “If you don’t do that, you should be extraordinarily sure that the custom platform you are thinking of has an amazing value proposition that can’t possibly be addressed by a versatile tool such as a smartphone.”

Sensor Fusion
Another development gaining momentum in smartphones is sensor fusion—the combining of multiple sensor outputs to perform complex applications. By using sensory data from disparate sources, you get more comprehensive information, which in itself is more accurate than the results derived from the same sensors individually.

  For example, if you have a GPS component in your smartphone,  you know where you are. When you combine that with a fluxgate magnetometer,  which is a solid-state compass, and a solid-state tilt sensor, not only do you know where you are, but you also know how the device is oriented. The fusion of data from these three sensors, for example, enables services such as Yelp Monocle.

  Yelp Monocle ranks establishments, mostly restaurants. You get reviews and a ranking from a user base. But Yelp Monocle is also an example of augmented reality. You hold your smartphone up and point it at the establishment, and as you look through the phone, you see an image of the restaurant, with the rating overlaid on the image.

  Sensor fusion increases demands on both the design engineer and the smartphone. The engineer must modify the design process, and the smartphone may well have to take advantage of emerging technology.

  The implementation of sensor fusion means more work for the designer. “With almost any sensor, you have to deal with amplification and complex filtering,” says Blakely. “You may also have sensors that are sensitive to things like temperature and humidity, which you must compensate for. So the integration of a new analog sensor into a cell phone can lead to some exciting new value propositions, but it’s not something to be taken lightly. You have to make sure you factor in analysis, test, and validation. You are going to go through a couple of iterations of these three before you get it right.”

  Sensor fusion is also going to require more processing, and there is a limit to what can be done efficiently on a smartphone. “But we are entering and era of cloud-computing support for mobile-based devices, where you will have these giant backend engines crunching data for you,” says Blakely. “You can have relatively thin clients receiving the information from these high-powered servers. Typical maintenance activities, such as turning down the power on certain elements or modules to save battery power will continue to be done locally. But I see algorithms that are going to bring all kinds of activities to life going out to the cloud.”

  For example, Google is pursuing real-time translation (you speak French on your phone, and someone on the other end hears English). “That sort of processing-intensive application is likely to live in the cloud,” says Blakely.

The Vision
Make no mistake. This isn’t a discussion just about smartphones. It’s a look at trends that are reshaping electronic devices and the design practices that create them. Integration has been a driving force for years. Add to it the changing perceptions of users, and it becomes the way of the future. Sensor fusion acknowledges the rising tide of sensing capabilities and applications. Both integration and the growing role of sensors are just indications that new perspectives are called for.

More Info:
IDEO

National Instruments

Yelp

Contributing Editor Tom Kevan is based in New Hampshire and is DE’s mechatronics, PLM, and systems expert. Send your comments about this article to [email protected].