Interview Andrea Onetti, General Manager Volume MEMS & Analog Division, STMicroelectronics Title sponsor of WT Wearable Technologies Innovation World Cup (submission until 15 Nov 2014)
Many products of your company fit perfectly to the upcoming megatrend of Wearable Technologies and Internet of Things. What are the most relevant products?
ST sees the Internet of Things as an important opportunity to put technology to better use and to help solve important global societal challenges; including improving people’s lives and making our planet’s resources stretch further. There are many end products that can be developed to support these goals and it is impossible to know what kind of devices they will be. However, we see that all the products need to be able to do a certain number of things – sense and translate analog signals from their surroundings, process information, connect to other objects and the internet, act on their surrounding and of course manage their energy needs. So we see that the ST portfolio of sensors and actuators analog components, microcontrollers, low power connectivity and energy and power management solutions is perfectly fitting to these needs.
MEMS are a big growth area. Besides having them in every smartphone, what are additional application fields?
MEMS have had tremendous success thanks indeed to their proliferation in smartphones. We recently passed the milestone of shipping 5 billion MEMS and their usage is growing fast. Thanks to MEMS we have been able to put sensing capabilities into tiny, low-power, affordable packages and so there are few barriers to including them in any electronic device. We see them becoming embedded in all kinds of objects: in wearable devices and clothes, in household appliances and all around the home, in cars, in buildings, under streets and even in trees!
STM is a long-term partner and actual title sponsor of the annual WT Innovation World Cup series. What are your favorite products or solutions you have seen in the Innovation World Cups so far?
That is a difficult question to answer. There have been so many interesting projects. I loved one of last year’s winners the Opengo therapist by Moticon which takes something wear everyday and “augments” it to become a therapeutic aid helping us to walk better. I also really liked the Recon HUD from 2012 which again took an existing object and “augmented” it to allow us to get more out of it.
You are offering highly sophisticated SDKs to the participants of this year’s WT Innovation World Cup. What kind of SDKs are these and what is a developer able to do with it?
This year we are offering SDKs related to the open development environment we are creating around our STM32 family to address the IoT smart nodes. We realize that many developers start by selecting a microcontroller and from there they add in the additional components they need, for example the Bluetooth Smart expansion board based on ST’s BlueNRG solution which can be plugged into the STM32 Nucelo development board to create a connected system. The Bluetooth smart solution is also available as a dongle. We offer a comprehensive software ecosystem around the STM32 microcontroller and the expansion boards.
Can you share with us your views on future products?
The world of connected “augmented” objects is really just starting to develop. We have seen two first waves of devices with smartphones and the initial phase of wearable products but as I said we believe we will see all kinds of objects that we cannot even imagine today. When the creativity of millions of developers across the globe is released with easy access to electronics and software then the sky really is the limit.
Smart watches are a big topic today. What are the core elements you could deliver considering STMicroelectronics product catalogue?
If you open up some of the leading smart watches in the market today or read the teardown report you will find ST products inside already. Some of the more visible parts are our STM32 microcontrollers and motion MEMS but also have ESD protections, balun, LED drivers and energy management ICs in there. We have a number of other solutions that will also be making their way into future devices such a pressure, humidity and temperature sensors and our BlueNRG Bluetooth smart solution.
