HP MEMS Could Shake up Motion Sensing


"Now the company has developed an MEMS accelerometer that can do the work of the high-end sensors, which until now have been mechanical devices the size of a brick that cost about US$1,000 per axis, with each axis sensing motion in one direction. It did so partly with technology developed in its printer division, which uses another type of MEMS in print heads. For now, these HP sensors aren't cheap enough to put in consumer electronics, but because they're MEMS, they may get there in a few years. In the meantime, they could revolutionize the use of accelerometers in buildings and geology.

The very touchy chips are 1,000 times as sensitive as the ones in consumer devices today, according to HP. As an indication of how sensitive they are, a business card dropped at one end of a table would generate a very strong signal on one of these sensors at the other end, according to David Erickson, engineering manager in the Technology Development Organization."


http://www.pcworld.com/article/181497/hp...