This switch is available with two positions (changeover) or three positions (off-on-off). A9T Toggle Switch. Offered in
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YOUR ELECTRONICS MAGAZINE
Watching Us Watching Them The Future of the User Interface www.rs-components.com
ISSUE 4
SWITCH TO APEM Apem is an established name in switches synonymous with innovation, quality and reliability. Approved to most European and International standards, APEM can provide PCB and panel switches membrane and stainless steel keypads, LEDs, panel indicators and joysticks that any designer can specify and feel secure using. APEM have established facilities worldwide providing technical assistance and availability.
www.rs-components.com
PUSHBUTTONS FOR HARSH ENVIRONMENTS
IR SERIES - Sealed to IP67 - Non-illuminated or illuminated - Momentary, Latching Rear Mount Versions - Square or Round Bezel Actuator - Wide choice of Actuator colours - Wide choice of illumination colours - Wired, Solder or Screw Terminals - Microswitch Versions Rated to 5A 250V AC - Screw Terminals Rated to 2A 250V AC
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Welcome to your latest edition of eTech. The theme for this edition is user interface and mobile technology, with a focus on the future of UI, 4G and batteries for mobile designs. We’ve also introduced a new ‘Market Trends’ feature in conjunction with iSuppli, where we look at future technology trends and the growing use of motion sensors in mobile phones - see page 22. The world of electronics technology is evolving rapidly and nowhere is this more apparent than on the DesignSpark.com forums and blogs. DesignSpark.com is the gateway to online resources and design support for engineers, powered by RS. DesignSpark.com provides us all with an ideal forum to keep up-to-date with the latest trends, tools and hot topics and some of these have shaped this edition.
Terms and conditions: Terms and conditions of sale set out in the current RS Catalogue. This issue is valid from October 2010 to December 2010.
Published by: RS Components Limited. Registered office: Birchington Road, Weldon, Corby, Northamptonshire NN17 9RS. Registered No. 1002091. RS Components Ltd 2010. RS are trademarks of RS Components Limited. An Electrocomponents Company.
Feedback from you indicates that you want to see more Design Reviews. So we have extended this feature with the ARM mbed review on page 20 and the Embedded Systems review on page 34. We are now more connected with you than ever before! Keep in touch with us through DesignSpark.com or email me at
[email protected]. Glenn Jarrett Head of Electronics Marketing
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iSAY RS NEWSLINE FUTURE OF THE USER INTERFACE PRODUCT NEWS BATTERIES FOR MOBILE DESIGNS GET READY FOR 4G LANE DETECTION DESIGN REVIEW: ARM mbed MARKET TRENDS: Motion Sensors SWITCHING CAPABILITIES EPD UPDATE : WIRELESS DESIGN TIPS: ELEKTOR ESSENTIALS DESIGN REVIEW: EMBEDDED SYSTEMS CUSTOMER PROFILE LUNCH BREAK INDUSTRY NEWS: FRAUNHOFER eTech - ISSUE 4
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RS NEWSLINES
PROF. FERNANDO AGUADO, UNIVERSITY OF VIGO, SPAIN SAYS:
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3D CAD Library from RS continues to grow
Why there’s
no time like the present to get into
The European Space Agency’s new low-cost launch vehicle, Vega, heralds “the democratisation of space” – and exciting opportunities for electronics companies to become involved.
Here’s how. Smaller satellites make it realistic to carry out missions that would have been inconceivable just a few years ago. CubeSats, one of the most popular standards for small satellites, allow scientists to carry out experiments in space with very modest budgets. The design of a single satellite traditionally involves massive expenditure, long periods of design and testing, and an extensive specialized team, but CubeSats change the rules completely. They are smaller and simpler, cheaper to launch, and a small team of engineers can develop in years, rather than decades. Lower launch costs and smaller payloads make it economical to fly shorter missions - and more of them. In turn, this means that electronic components on board don’t need to be radiation hardened, nor undergo time-consuming, costly space qualification. Commercial, off-the-shelf components can be used instead. In this “virtuous circle”, modern COTS will help meet the tight mass, power, and dimensions constraints in CubeSats, and at lower cost. It all combines to make CubeSat highly competitive for commercial
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”
space
For example, the XATCOBEO project, a joint research project between INTA and the University of Vigo includes three exciting and challenging experiments: an in-flight reconfigurable radio based on standard FPGAs, a radiation dose sensor and a panel deployment mechanism. This pioneering work will pave the way for many future small-satellite projects where the University of Vigo has a pivotal role: like HUMSAT - a low-cost global communications infrastructure for humanitarian aid and disaster or climate change monitoring; GENSO a worldwide network of education and radio amateur ground stations; and the European Student Earth Orbiter (ESEO) and European Student Moon Orbiter (ESMO). In all of these, the use of COTS components will provide opportunities for the European electronics industry to test its technology and play its part.
RS introduces 3D CAD models from more manufacturers
Silicon and Development Kits add ultra low power choice to ARM portfolio at RS
In a major expansion of the 3D CAD programme, RS introduces an additional 5000 new models available to download from its website. Models from key manufacturer Tyco Electronics include the popular Mate-n-Lok and MODU ranges, along with high speed Z-Pack and Multigig connectors. Also introduced are a series of sensor and relay models from Schneider Electric, ideal for use in safety equipment designs.
Adding Energy Micro to the already comprehensive range of ARM devices at RS brings the world of ultra-low power applications in to the hands of Design Engineers everywhere. This range expansion will include 128k Flash versions of all devices in the Gecko product family. Alongside the silicon, both the Gecko and Tiny Gecko development tools will be available allowing designers to put the advanced 32-bit Cortex
With this expansion, RS now offers a huge number of 3D CAD models in over 20 different file formats to suit all of the most popular 3D design software suites. All models are available to download free-of-charge, ready to be incorporated into your new design. To download 3D models from RS, visit www.rs-components.com
applications. Also, these smaller satellites will train new engineers in space technologies, and make space missions affordable for many fields of research.
Energy Micro Cortex M3 range now available. M3 core and its integrated lowpower peripherals to the test. The combination of Ultra-low power and industry standard core should prove to be a compelling one for energy conscious engineers everywhere.
For detailed information, visit www.rs-components.com
Development kit and accessories offer doubles to over 1,300 RS recruits development kit reviewers
RS sign new distribution agreement with Bourns Partnership covers EMEA and APAC, adding to existing US agreement
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Lower launch costs and smaller payloads make it economical to fly shorter missions and more of them.
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If you’ve got a strong opinion and would like the opportunity to get on your soapbox, write it up in around 300 words and email it to
[email protected]
The partnership with Bourns, a leading manufacturer of passive components, formalises the long-standing relationship with RS. The two companies will be working together on a series of initiatives covering range developments and promotional activities, to be carried out on a global basis. Over 700 new products have been added to the RS range, including TBU™ high speed protection components.
More details can be found at www.rs-components.com
A significant investment by RS in leading edge development tools has seen the development kit and accessories offer expand to over 1,300. Now RS is actively looking for reviewers to contribute to the growing database of independent reviews on DesignSpark.com. To view the full range of development kits on offer, visit www.rs-components.com/developmentkits If you are interested in writing and posting a review, email your details to etech@rs-components. com and we will send you details of how to obtain a development kit free of charge.
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Watching Us Watching Them The Future of the User Interface Designers of home computing and consumer technology know that success relies heavily on delivering the most outstanding user experience. Game consoles, smartphones and even PCs are evolving quickly to provide seamless, intuitive interactions that consumers not only demand, but also need if they are to make best use of increasingly diverse and powerful features. To make it happen, designers are “disappearing” the technology.
Growth of touch Mechanical knobs, dials and sliders, which were commonplace even on portable music players as recently as the last decade, have quickly become ancient history. Mobile phones introduced the concept of soft keys to enable context-sensitive access to large numbers of features and options. Current MP3 players and mobile handsets have taken the concept further to deliver an even more flexible user interface featuring capacitive touch sensing. More recently still, smartphones with multi-touch capability have begun enabling users to interact even more freely and naturally with their gadgets. Basic two-touch sensing allows features such as pinchto-zoom, allowing people to experience and share the increasing variety of content now available on mobile handsets more spontaneously and naturally than ever before. Just around the corner, true multi-touch, capable of decoding ten or more touch points simultaneously, hints at a vast new world of single-user and multi-user applications; not only on equipment such as handhelds and game terminals, but also in professional applications such as drawing packages, management/logistics software, and tools for collaborative design. To enable the next technology leap for touchscreens, UK-based Peratech has developed a cost effective pressure-sensing touchscreen technology which differentiates between gentle touch and a hard poke. Using what’s called the Quantum Tunnelling Composite (QTC), a touchscreen display can very efficiently detect where, and how hard the screen is being pressed. Peratech’s QTC changes the game Continued page 08>
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< Continued from page 06 when it comes to human machine interface design with capabilities to build truly 3D user interfaces in small, low power devices. Using products with an embedded QTC switch consumers could use this third dimension to search deeper into a file structure simply by pressing harder, control an avatar’s movement through a game more naturally, or create the thin or thick lines which are vital for Far East characters. Optical sensing Despite howls from some selfconfessed geeks and couch potatoes, disappearing technology is also having a significant effect in the gaming sector. Nintendo Wii, featuring MEMS motion sensors embedded in wireless handsets, took user interaction to a higher level than was possible with the traditional gamepad featuring button and joystick control only. The recent announcement of Microsoft’s Kinect for Xbox 360 claims to advance the concept of ultra-accessible and compelling gameplay even further. Kinect uses optical sensing and recognition technologies developed by the Israeli company PrimeSense to realise what some
“
More recently still, smartphones with multitouch capability have begun enabling users to interact even more freely and naturally with their gadgets.
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consider as being the ultimate game controller – the player’s own body.
Optical 3D sensing can be done in a number of ways. Some systems detect the position of the user’s body or limbs by calculating the “time of flight” for a pulse of light. PrimeSense uses what it calls
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“light coding”, at wavelengths close to infrared, to compute depth-of-field data. The resulting absence of lag means this approach is well suited to highspeed consumer devices. PrimeSense’s 3D capture system shows how visual recognition, drawing on components such as CMOS image sensors can allow machines to respond to users’ movements. Sensed actions can be replicated on screen and used to determine subsequent events in the game; no handheld or even wearable controller is needed. Building on the concept of motionaware gaming, which Nintendo Wii cemented into the collective consumer consciousness, PrimeSense’s technology heralds another significant milestone: the age of the controller-less controller. The notion is poised to reach significantly beyond gaming, however. PrimeSense envisages television viewers using hand movements, instead of a traditional remote, to select channels, browse interactive features and access online services. The company’s CEO, Inon Beracha, has said the technology enables a paradigm shift in the way people interact with consumer electronic devices. In fact, PrimeSense’s goal, through its recognition technologies, is to enable users to control and interact naturally with devices in a simple and intuitive way. Implications for professional technology This, of course, is where many owners of professional technology – such as industrial, medical and office equipment - would like to go. Achieving a more natural and intuitive user experience is seen as being central to helping business owners increase their productivity, reduce training overheads, and avoid cost contributors such as stoppages and human errors. It is also important to note that today’s equipment operators expect a better user experience; as increasingly tech-savvy consumers, they are accustomed to easy interaction with devices
at home and on the way to work; why should they then spend their working day struggling with cumbersome, unrewarding industrial technology? The benefits of good ergonomics in industrial design are, of course, already understood. Equipment designers have drawn heavily on existing PC technology, for example, not only to benefit from the advanced processing capabilities and economies of scale that are available but also to take advantage of user-interface advances such as menus and pointers – and, more recently, touchscreen capability. Examining some of today’s most advanced machines, such as production-line equipment for electronics manufacturing, shows how simplified graphics and touchscreens are being used successfully to help users set up complex processes quickly and accurately, despite economic pressures that are forcing employers to provide the briefest, most cursory training. Extensive use of pictorial – rather than text-based – instructions also overcomes language barriers, which brings benefits for equipment owners as well as vendors in today’s globalised economy. Taking a fresh look at important advances in the consumer sector – and particularly technologies such as multi-touch, motion sensing and 3D optical techniques – could inspire future generations of professional equipment designers to deliver even more productive, easy to use and rewarding designs in the future.
switch solutions Omron
Introducing the New A9 series of Switches This new range of switches from Omron has a see-saw mechanism that offers high contact reliability combined with a quick electrical changeover that minimises risk of sparks and chattering. ■ Two-point clip contact mechanism combined with see-saw action ■ Gold-plated clip contact and cleaning mechanisms ensure high reliability ■ Specially designed to prevent grease entering the contact area ■ Sealed against flux entry and a built-in ‘O’ ring ensure immersion washability ■ Washable Models (IP64)
A9P Push Button Switch Available with straight, right-angle or vertical mounting, with or without a 5mm cap top. A9S Slide Switch This switch is available with two positions (changeover) or three positions (off-on-off). A9T Toggle Switch Offered in momentary and latching form with two or three positions and a standard, flat or antielectrostatic actuator. It is also available with straight, right-angle, vertical or bracket versions.
Find the latest introductions from RS to support new user interface designs for applications at www.rs-components.com
Omron’s range of switches includes quality, precision microswitches satisfying most industries, tactile switches featuring the industry’s smallest positive click action switch and DIP switches to suit most production processes.
Omron designs operability, user-friendliness and customer benefits into all of its switches. Visit www.omron-rs.eu to view the range
PRODUCT NEWS
product NEWS
Agilent 33500 Series Wavefrom Generator Agilent Technologies Announces 30 MHz Function/ Arbitrary Waveform Generators with Unparalleled Signal Accuracy compact connections. n Agilent 33500 series of waveform generators deliver the lowest total harmonic distortion, true point-by-point arbitrary waveforms, lowest jitter in their class for the most challenging measurement applications.The generators include USB 2.0 , 10/100 Base-T Ethernet (LAN), LXI-C(optional) and GPIB (optional) for quick and easy connectivity to a PC or a network. Online search term: Agilent, 30MHz
JTAG programming and boundary-scan testing products Increase your coverage with JTAG master n JTAGMaster is a Boundary Scan Tester and In-System Programmer from ABI Electronics. The ABI JTAGMaster is a complete and powerful solution for the testing, faultfinding and programming of complex PCB assemblies with JTAG devices. Online search term: JTagMaster
RS THERMAL INTERFACE
Molex Mini-Fit H20 range
Allowing the efficient conduction and management of heat away from sensitive components
The sealed Mini-Fit H2O™ IP67-rated system meets the need for weatherproof, compact connections n The Mini-Fit H2O™ mid-range power connector is designed for use in weatherproof applications. It has a small overall profile and can handle up to 9.0A per circuit. Online search term: molex h2o minifit
n RS Components is delighted to introduce a range of thermal interface materials, gap fillers, greases and gels. The range offers good value without compromise in performance. Online search term: RS Thermal Interface Material
RECOM REC3.5 and REC6 isolated DC/DC converters Re³inforced DC/DC Converters offer up to 10kVDC isolation compact connections
Desco EMIT Bench Top Zero Volt Ioniser Zero Volt ESD equipment for handling of sensitive electronic components n Ionization systems provide neutralization of charges on items such as circuit board materials and some device packages. The ionisers from Desco Emit are very small in size, have two fan speeds, have visual and audible power and alarm indicators and come with a 5 year manufacturer’s warranty. Online search term: ESD zero ioniser
n The Recom Re³inforced range offer users the triple bonus of reinforced isolation, high isolation voltage and high efficiency. The REC3.5-R8/R10 offers 3.5W of power and the REC6-R8/R10 offers 6W of power, both with 10kVDC of isolation in a DIP24 package. Online search term: recom, rec35*, rec6*
NEW Cost effective passive components from RS RS Series of Thick Film Resistors, 0402 / 0603 / 0805 / 1206 format
Schaffner inlet filter 9244x series
n RS Series of Thick Film Resistors, 0402 / 0603 / 0805 / 1206 format, RS Thick Film Chip Resistors have anti-surge characteristics superior to standard metal film resistors and are very reliable. They are suitable for both reflow and flow soldering operation with a consistent size to allow pick and place machines to be used. Online search term: RS Resistor
FN 9244 Excellent performance IEC inlet filter n The FM9244 series of IEC inlet filters from Schaffner provide excellent performance and are a practical solution helping you to pass EMI system approval in a short time. These filters combine an IEC inlet and mains filter with superior filter attenuation in a small form factor. Online search term: schaffner FN9244*
Microchip MCP2200EV-VCP Hall Effect Joysticks from Apem Contactless joysticks for harsh environments n The 3000 Series are high precision contactless joysticks. It is available in one, two or three axes formats. Long trouble-free life is assured with the latest hall effect technology. Online search term: Heavy duty Apem
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MCP2200 USB to RS232 Development and Evaluation Board n The MCP2200EV-VCP is a USB to RS232 development and evaluation board for the MCP2200 USB to UART device. The accompanying software allows the special device features to be configured and controlled. The board is powered from USB. Online search term: Microchip MCP2200*
See more online - Over 5,000 new products are added at www.rs-components.com every month
RS Series of Carbon Film Leaded Resistors, Axial 0.25W / 0.5W / 1W / 2W format n The RS Carbon Composition Resistors consist of a solid cylindrical resistive element with embedded wire leads to which the wires are attached. The body of the resistor is protected with paint or plastic polymers then colour coded with its value. Online search term: RS Carbon Resistor
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Batteries live longer for mobile designs By Vincent Bannigan Product Manager, RS Components
As mobile devices continue to evolve, they are becoming smaller and smarter. Today’s higher performance mobile processors demand ever-greater power; and users want longer-lasting, faster-charging batteries, in ever smaller and lighter packages. The batteries for use in these applications continue to develop with higher energy densities, as manufacturers apply new rechargeable chemistries such as lithium-ion and lithium polymer to professional and industrial devices as well as consumer products. Not to be confused with the non-rechargeable lithium primary cells, lithium-ion batteries are justifiably popular for portable consumer electronics, as their energy-to-weight ratios
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are amongst the best, they suffer no memory effect, and lose their charge slowly when not in use. Beyond these advantages, lithium ion batteries are increasingly recognised for military, electric vehicle, and aerospace applications because of their high energy density. Manufacturers are making a string of R&D improvements to the technology, focusing on energy density, durability, cost, and safety. For example, Enix Energies offers RS
customers a range of Li-ion batteries in cylindrical and flat prismatic hard and soft-pack formats, delivering between 3.7V, 1840mAh and 15V, 6800mAh in packages of up to 12 cells. All provide high energy density and long cycle life, require no maintenance and have built-in circuit protection Improving on Lithium-ion Lithium polymer technology is a further development from lithium-ion batteries, in which the lithium-salt electrolyte is held in a
solid polymer composite rather than an organic solvent, as is the case with Li-ion. Advantages of this approach include lower manufacturing cost, more rugged construction and wider adaptability to different packaging shapes. This means that, as with Lithium Ion battery cells, they can be used to construct battery packs in a huge variety of voltages and capacities, all of them ultra-lightweight in relation to their capacity. Varta’s innovative EasyPack range, based on their leading PoLiFlex® technology, offers a high performance, ready-made, cost effective solution. The expanding RS catalogue includes four 3.7V EasyPack modules with capacities up to 2000mAh. And designing could not be simpler, thanks to the availability of an EasyPack Charging Evaluation Kit. This comes complete with a sample of each of the EasyPack range; plus a plug in power supply, open PCB-mounted charger circuit and connector set. Based on the Texas Instruments BQ24014 charge management chip, the kit also incorporates 14 test pins to make it easy to perform measurements and add elements to the circuit. Battery innovations are set to continue,
powered by battery manufacturer’s everstronger R&D efforts, according to Herbert Schein, Managing Director and CEO at VARTA Microbattery, “There is a continuing increase in more powerful batteries, for example in the area of rechargeable batteries there is a need for technically advanced and well-engineered energy storage. VARTA Microbattery meets these requirements with fundamental research.” The challenges of the future will be met by a strengthened team in a new research and development centre.
cells, ensuring that there is always the perfect solution for any application. Regardless of technology, the fundamental questions remain the same for the designer: finding the solution that best meets the requirements of size, voltage, current, duration, weight, temperature range, recharging, environmental and safety considerations.
The right choice – the widest range Despite this, traditional solutions may still prove best for some applications. The limited output current of Li-ion and Li-polymer batteries may be a drawback, especially with need for a protection circuit module. Also transportation issues need to be considered with lithium chemistries. Often there is a more suitable solution provided by more traditional technologies: for example a 2.7kg pure lead battery can produce over 300A. It’s hand portable yet powerful enough to start a large vehicle. RS stocks literally hundreds of different battery types, from dozens of manufacturers, ranging from coin back-up batteries to lead-acid primary
Find a complete range of batteries suitable for mobile devices at www.rs-components.com eTech - ISSUE 4
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Get ready for
4G “
Fourth-generation (4G) wireless has got off to a quiet start but the migration to a faster mobile internet is already underway. Cities such as Atlanta, Chicago and Las Vegas already have 4G services in place and US operator Sprint is gradually adding cities to its list.
Stockholm and Oslo saw the first deployments of 4G service by operator TeliaSonera late last year. But, as with the 3G services that preceded them, there is a catch. These services all fall under the 4G banner but these US and European networks use different protocols. Sprint and a number of operators in Asia have opted for services based on a mobile form of the Wimax standard that was originally developed to offer wireless broadband to homes and at least 250 are already in place. TeliaSonera and other large operators such as Verizon Wireless in the US and NTT DoCoMo in Japan have chosen the Long-Term Evolution (LTE) of the standard widely used for 3G today in Europe and Japan. As with 3G, there are strong technical similarities between LTE and Wimax – their differences often the result of their different lineages. Although the world ended up with three different 3G protocols, they were all based around the core technology of code-division multiple access (CDMA). CDMA2000, based largely on technology from Qualcomm, became the preferred standard for the US and Korea. In Europe and Japan, wideband-CDMA prevailed. TDS-CDMA was the last
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The move from 3G to 4G is far smaller than the one from GSM to 3G that faced integrated circuit (IC) designers ten years ago
to launch, getting underway just ahead of the Beijing Olympics in 2008. One thing became very clear early on in the development of the 4G standards. The 4G networks would use some form of orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM), the same basic technology as that used in WiFi wireless networks and ADSL for wired access to the internet. The situation is slightly simpler than with 3G as Qualcomm’s own successor to CDMA2000 did not enjoy success: operators picked either LTE or Wimax. There is good news for anyone who wants to implement LTE in industrial communications. In terms of the amount of die space that it takes up, the move from 3G to 4G is far smaller than the one from GSM to 3G that faced integrated circuit (IC) designers ten years ago. According to Professor Gerhard Fettweis of the Technical University of Dresden, whereas the 3G modem would use up a complete IC ten years ago, a modem that supports 2G, 3G and LTE implemented using today’s silicon technology does not need more than a quarter of a die. So, we are likely to see those functions combined with applications and graphics processors. That will not
”
only reduce the cost of 4G handsets, it means you can get the additional bandwidth and lower latency of LTE alongside high-speed CPUs that can be used for embedded processing. The result for designers of industrial systems is a set of wireless standards that support highspeed access to the internet at a lower cost than that of 3G when it first appeared. Analysts also expect the wireless dongle market to be much more important in the early development of 4G than they were for 3G, especially as the networks that underpin 4G are based on the Internet Protocol (IP) rather than being designed around the needs of voice communication. The design decisions behind the 4G standards help with applications such as security, realtime monitoring and control. Many network
protocols benefit from low latency as well as high bandwidth and LTE in particular was designed to reduce latency compared with 3G. This helps reduce the chances of time-outs and similar problems from disrupting communications, as well as helping applications such as videoconferencing where delay in sound and video can irritate the users. In applications such as telemedicine, LTE and Wimax bring higher peak bandwidths than their 3G predecessors, making it possible to have high-quality two-way video to allow doctors to make better diagnoses remotely.
Wimax can support downlink datarates approaching 50Mbit/s, with LTE promising 100Mbit/s, although the higher peak speed of LTE was only recently demonstrated by Telstra in Australia. But these are speeds that, for users closer to a basestation, compete well with ADSL minus the wires, making possible a host of new applications.
Get more online... Find out more on 4G, and add your voice on how the roll-out is going at www.designspark.com
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Lane detector
zooms out the noise By Yifei Wang, Naim Dahnoun and Alin Achim Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, University of Bristol
Throughout the last two decades, a significant amount of research has been carried out in the area of lane detection to improve the safety of motor vehicles. These systems will prevent drivers from unwittingly moving out of their lane and into the path of other cars on the road. It is a difficult problem to solve as, even with clearly marked lanes, images captured by a camera contain a large number of extraneous features that can confuse the lane-detection algorithm. Feature extraction is a key part of lane detection: using image processing to work out which shapes in the frame form part of the actual lanes along which the vehicle is moving. By using the characteristics of the lanes and their shape information, a novel feature-extraction algorithm has been developed that can verify whether the features in a process belong to the lanes or are extraneous noise. Typically, while driving on a straight road with continuous lane markings, the positions of the lanes will not change significantly over time from the driver’s point of view. The algorithm takes advantage of the above phenomenon and tries to find the nonmoving features within the scene. In order to do this, a digital interpolationis is used.
By carefully selecting a region of the image and interpolating this region back to the original image size, the driver’s view can be simulated and the lanes on the interpolated and original images should overlap. The first task is to select the appropriate area for interpolation. On a flat, straight road, the vehicle will head towards the vanishing point where the left and right lanes meet on the horizon. A Sobel filter is used to generate lines for each clear edge in the image.The intersection of each line and the horizon’s ‘vanishing line’ is a possible position for the vanishing point of the lane. A voting system picks the point on the vanishing line to which most of the detected edges point. This technique works for flat, straight roads but few are like that. To extend this approach to curved lanes, Continued page 18>
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Add USB connectivity to your application without completely redesigning the system
the image is split into a number of horizontal bands and perform vanishing point detection on each of the image bands.
As multiple vanishing points exist on segmented images each of the image bands has its own corresponding vanishing point and the results of edge detection on each section are compared separately. Image content above the vanishing line, which does not include useful information, is not processed in order to reduce the computational complexity. The system was implemented on a Texas Instruments TMSD6437 Digital Media Processor, based on the C64+ core which
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can perform up to eight 8bit multiplyaccumulate (MAC) operations per clock cycle. The processor can be clocked at up to 700MHz. , although we run it at 600MHz, . Due to the high precision required in some algorithms a combination of 8 × 8bit and 4 × 16bit MACs, which the processor supports, have been used. This processor also provides a video subsystem. This provides a glueless interface to the standard video decoder and on-screen display. The combination of the video subsystem and the enhanced direct memory access (EDMA) that the processor supports simplifies considerably the data transfer from the camera to the processing buffer and from the output buffer to the display. If the EDMA and the central processing unit (CPU) are synchronised perfectly, the memory transfer overhead will be reduced to minimum. The captured frames (test videos are in NTSC format) are resized to 352 × 240 pixels to reduce the computation, using the onchip resizer hardware. The resizer is capable of generating output images from 1/4× to 4× the original image size in increments of 256/N where N is an integer between 64 and 1024.
comparison, in addition to the edge map from the original image. As the maximum zooming ratio is set to be 0.9 in normal cases, the selected zooming areas have almost the same size as the original image. Therefore a large amount of data needs to be transferred. However, a large portion of the image is repeated for each pair of the adjacent selected areas. Reusing the repeated areas will save the memory transfer significantly. In experiments, the initial gradient map was very noisy, containing a large number of unwanted features. The resizing and noise-removal algorithm successfully removes most of the unwanted feature but preserve the lane features, showing that the implementation results agree with the theory and are robust. The possibility of using the on-chip resizer to interpolate the zooming areas needs to be further investigated. But the complete system is running today in real-time at above 23 frames per second without the need to write code at the assembly level and just by managing the memory efficiently. Further optimisation could be achieved by identifying the slow parts of the code and optimise these parts using intrinsics, linear assembly or assembly.
The system was implemented can be separated into three main parts.The first is edge and vanishing-point detection, which takes 16% of the total computation power. Handling multiple vanishing points takes 2% of compute power.The last component of the process, digital interpolation and feature extraction, is the most processor hungry, taking 82% of the total computation power. As the iterative zooming process normally requires ten steps, ten different zooming areas need to be transferred into internal memory for interpolation and edge
Memory
The zooming and edge comparison process is carried out with different zooming ratios until most of the unwanted features are removed. Typically, the lanes will remain intact because, on a straight road, will remain approximately in the same position on the image no matter the scale factor. The other objects will disappear because they will not match up in all cases. Based on experiments, ten iterations are normally sufficient even under very severe conditions. During the edge comparison process, segmented lane markings will be shortened because of the change in length and position caused by the image scaling. Although they will stay on the same line after interpolation, the upper part of the line will be erased.
Analog
To extract the lane features and suppress noise from edges that do not belong to the lane markings, a logical-AND operation is applied to the original image edge map and to the edge map from the scaled, interpolated image on a pixel-by-pixel basis. If the interpolated edges overlap with the original image edges, these edges are preserved. More of the noise can be removed by rejecting edges that are clearly at the wrong angle to be a lane marking.
Digital Signal Controllers
The number of edges belonging to the lane boundaries found by the Sobel filter will decrease with distance, so the vanishing point of the lowest, and nearest, image band is detected first. The vanishing points on the upper bands are detected based on the vanishing-point position of the lower bands to reduce the detection error and the amount of processing needed. Detection accuracy is helped by tracking the position of the vanishing point frame by frame on the basis that the position of the vanishing point will not change dramatically.
Microcontrollers
Does your product design require a USB Connectivity upgrade?
< Continued from page 17
Microchip offers design engineers a complete, out-of-the-box solution that makes it easy to add USB connectivity to existing systems. The MCP2200EV-VCP USB-to-RS232 Demo Board is a low-cost evaluation tool which is supported with software libraries and a PC based configuration tool, the board removes the burden of thoroughly understanding the USB protocol from system designers, which simplifies the addition of customizable USB functionality to existing designs.
ORDER YOUR MCP2200EV-VCP DEMO BOARD FROM RS TODAY!
The Board serves as a complete USB-to-RS232 converter solution (dongle) and provides USB-to-GPIO capability, enabling designers to manipulate the on-chip I/O from the included PC software, so that they can program and test different functional configurations. The whole solution is designed to shorten time-to-market for a variety of applications in addition to legacy RS-232 applications.
Features: • • • • •
MCP2200EV-VCP : RS Stock No 699-0448 : ~ £16.00 MCP2200-I/MQ : RS Stock No 698-8990 : £1.54 MCP2200-I/SO : RS Stock No 698-8993 : £1.42 MCP2200-I/SS : RS Stock No 698-8997 : £1.42
Powered via USB Test points for all GPIO pins RS232 device and 9-pin D-sub connector for connecting to RS232 applications Tx and Rx LEDs for indicating USB to UART traffic (when enabled) Software for configuring special features of the device
Intelligent Electronics start with Microchip See our full range of TI digital media processors available from stock at www.rs-components.com
www.rs-components.com/microchip rswww.com/microchip The Microchip name and logo, the Microchip logo and PIC are registered trademarks of Microchip Technology Incorporated in the U.S.A. and other countries. All other trademarks mentioned herein are property of their respective companies. © 2010, Microchip Technology Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. ME276Eng/08.10D
DESIGN REVIEW
DESIGN REVIEW
Using the
ARM mbed in the cloud By Dr William Marshall, RS Components
The launch of the mbed development system for ARM-based microcontrollers represents a revolution in the way computer software and firmware is developed. The expensive business of buying software development tools such as IDEs and compilers is eliminated by using internet-based resources. This article describes my first experience with this new way of working: the aim being to find out just how ‘rapidly’ I could prototype a simple mobile robot collision avoidance system using the NXP LPC1768-based mbed module and a commercial ultrasonic sonar unit. The mbed kit hardware On opening the box you will find: the tiny mbed module itself, a USB cable, a credit card-sized aide-memoire showing the module pin functions and a single sheet of ‘Getting Started’ instructions. Oh, and a useful mbed sticker. There is no CD with megabytes of software to be installed on your PC, no small print informing you that you will have to purchase the full versions of the development tools if you want to create anything larger than a program to blink an LED. Instead, you are told to connect the module to a PC with Internet
access using the supplied USB cable and then navigate to the mbed web site. The module is USB-powered and needs no separate supply. Getting on-line As soon as you make the USB connection to your PC, drivers will be installed and the mbed module will appear as a new drive in Windows Explorer. The drive contains only one file at this point: mbed.htm. Double clicking on this file will open your web browser at the mbed home page where selecting ‘Signup’ will take you to the registration screen. Once your module is registered you will have access to the Compiler. This is a social networking site for engineers, so you have your own home page, a ‘notebook’ or blog where you can jot down thoughts and ideas on a project and file space for your programs. I also like the way I can work on a project anywhere there’s an
internet connection: drop the breadboard in my briefcase with a laptop and I’m no longer tied to the lab! Getting the hardware together My test project involved interfacing an SRF08 ultrasonic rangefinder unit and a simple dc motor to the mbed module. The SRF08 has an I2C bus so linking it to one of the two I2C ports available just involved a few wire links and a couple of pull-up resistors. The mbed module has a +5V output (from the USB port) and this powers the rangefinder. The motor requires more current than the mbed can supply so it will require a separate PSU, but this could be a battery pack to keep things portable. The popular L293D H-bridge driver chip is used to drive the motor from one of the six available PWMout lines. Programming Before creating some code, I realized debugging would be a whole lot easier if program output data could be displayed on the PC using a serial terminal emulator such as Windows Hyperterminal. A Serial Port driver must be installed on the PC first and is thoughtfully provided in the ‘Handbook’ section. This allows the C functions printf and scanf to be used in a program. Click on ‘Compiler’ and a new window opens revealing an IDE-type screen, but much simpler and with no de-bugging features. Select ‘New’, type in a program name and you’re ready to add some program lines. The language is C with the object classes of C++. The first line of a C program is normally #include “stdio.h” which brings in the library of standard functions, but in this case we use #include “mbed.h” for the same purpose. The library contains the necessary drivers for all the port pins including I2C, PWM and DigitalOut.
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eTech - ISSUE 4
// mbed test program using I2C and PWMout: WGM 6/2010 // Uses SRF08 Ultrasonic Range Finder #include “mbed.h” I2C sonar(p9, p10); Serial pc(USBTX, USBRX); PwmOut motor(p21); const int addr = 0xE0; char cmd[2]; char echo[2];
// // // //
Define SDA, SCL pins Define Tx, Rx for PC Define PWM pin I2C device address for SRF08
int main() { // Set up SRF08 max range and receiver sensitivity over I2C bus cmd[0] = 0x02; // Range register cmd[1] = 0x1C; // Set max range about 100cm sonar.write(addr, cmd, 2); cmd[0] = 0x01; // Receiver gain register cmd[1] = 0x1B; // Set receiver gain sonar.write(addr, cmd, 2); // Set up PWM frequency motor.period(0.01);
// Set PWM frequency = 100Hz
while (1) { // Get range data from SRF08 // Send Tx burst command over I2C bus cmd[0] = 0x00; cmd[1] = 0x51; sonar.write(addr, cmd, 2); wait(0.07); // Read back range over I2C bus cmd[0] = 0x02; sonar.write(addr, cmd, 1, 1); sonar.read(addr, echo, 2);
// Command register // Ranging results in cm // Send ranging burst // Wait for return echo // Address of first echo // Send address of first echo // read two-byte echo result
// Generate PWM mark/space ratio from range data float range = (echo[0] eTech - ISSUE 4
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DESIGN REVIEW
DESIGN REVIEW
< Continued from page 35
manufacturers NEC, Microchip and Texas Instruments define their respective sleep modes.
(1MHz, 3V) in Run Mode, 30µA in Deep Sleep Mode and 0.2µA in Deep Power Down Mode.
active time and therefore to lower power consumption. The execution time, on the other hand, is determined by single cycle commands, the architecture of the instruction set and the clock frequency, and it is expressed in MIPS. Data sheet values for Run Mode therefore have to show the clock frequency and the operating voltage to be comparable. As an example, it is odd to see voltage values like 1.8V, which no battery delivers but which leads to low power consumption. And what is the point of showing this value if the On-Chip AD converter only works with a minimum of 2.2V? In both cases we can assume that it is for marketing reasons.
Idle Mode The Idle Mode does not seem to be given as much prominence and it is only listed in a few data sheets. Depending on the manufacturer, the CPU and the non-volatile memory are inactive in this mode. On the other hand, the peripherals, including interrupt controller, event system and DMA controller, continue to be active. Any interrupt will wake the system up.
Regular readers of Elektronik Industrie will already have seen Atmel’s 8-bit/16-bit AVRXmega Controller in some of the high-tech toys that we dismantle in each issue. The controllers require 365µA at 1MHz in Run Mode and 1.8V or 790µA at 3V. In Idle Mode, the values are 135µA or 255 µA respectively. For the Power Down Modes the following values are given: 0.1µA (all functions deactivated) or 1.1µA (WDT, sampled BOD). Finally, in Atmel‘s Power Save Mode the values are 0.55µA at 1.8V or 1.15µA at 3V.
16bit TIMER/ EVENT CONTROLLER 00
TO00/TIO10/PO1 T1000
PORT 0
2
P00, P01
PORT 2
6
P20, P25
PORT 3
3
P30, P35
PORT 6
2
P60, P61
PORT 12
3
P121, P122, P125
RxD6/P61
When measuring the power consumption in Run Mode, it is also relevant whether the PLL that determines the clock frequency is active or not and which division factor it uses.
T151/P30
8-bit TIMER S1
TOH1/P30
8-bit TIMER H1
INTERNAL LOW-SPEED OSCILLATOR
Current consumption
WATCHDOG TIMER RxD6/P61
10% Duty Cycle
Active Icc
78K/0 CPU CORE
FLASH MEMORY
SERIAL INTERFACE UARTS
TxD6/P60
SERIAL INTERFACE IICA
INTERNAL HIGH-SPEED RAM
AVREF
Sleep Icc
INTERNAL HIGH-SPEED OSCILLATOR
AMP0+ /P22 NOTE AMP0- /P20
VOLTAGE REGULATOR
RxD6/P61 INTP0/P00
Fig. 1: Since µCs are often in sleep mode for long periods of time, the values for this operating mode should be very low, which improves the total energy footprint. (Picture: Atmel)
INTP1/P30, INTP2/P31, INTP3/P32
X2/EXCLK/P122
OPERATIONAL AMPLIFIER 0
NOTE
Time
RESET/P125 X1/P121
6
AMP0OUTNOTE / PGAINNOTE/P21
TOOLCO/X1, TOOLC1/P31 TOOLDO/X2, TOOLD1/P32
SYSTEM CONTROL
A/D CONVERTER ANIO/P20 to ANI5/P25
POC/LVI CONTROL
RESET CONTROL
ON-CHIP DEBUG
SDAAO/P61 SCLAO/P60
Average current
POWER ON CLEAR LOW VOLTAGE INDICATOR
3
REGC
OSC2/CLKO
OSC1/CLKI
RAM
EEPROM
PORTA Timing Generation PORTB
INTRC Oscillator
VDO
VSE
PORTC
PORTD
SR Latch
ADC 10-Bit
Timer0
Timer1
Timer2
Timer4
Timer6
Comparators
LCD
ECCP1
ECCP2
ECCP3
CCP4
CCP5
MSSP
EUSART
PORTE
Fig. 2: Architecture of the PIC16F193x. (Picture: Microchip)
Sleep Modes In many applications the controller does not run continuously and the peripherals, too, are mostly idle (Fig. 1). In this case, the total energy consumption can be reduced through the various sleep modes. In Sleep Mode, the CPU and peripherals are supplied with voltage, but they remain without clock frequency and additionally the RAM content is retained. Among the different sleep modes there are fine differences to be observed. In Table 1, we have summarised how the
36
Wake-Up Time Another factor in the energy footprint is the wake-up time, i.e. the time that the controller takes to wake up from sleep mode. In the simplest case, waking up can be triggered by a keypress, or it can be caused by bus activity, receiving signals from an IR source, Bluetooth activity etc.
CPU
MCLR
eTech - ISSUE 4
The 8-bit controller ML610Q4xx from Rohm is brand new on the market. This ultra-low-power controller with RISC architecture and three-level pipeline processes one instruction per clock cycle and uses embedded Flash at 3.6V down to 1.1V. It comprises LCD drivers for 144 to 1,536 segments, up to 64KB Flash/ROM as well as 4KB RAM. It features extensive peripherals and interfaces plus on-chip debugging. Power consumption is given as 0.5µA in Halt Mode and 0.15µA in Stop Mode
INTERUPT CONTROL
Fig. 3: Architecture of the µPD78Kx2-L. (Picture: NEC Electronics) Program Flash Memory
Maxim offers the MAXQ2000, a 16-bit µC with an LCD interface for actuating up to 100 RGB segments. This was originally developed for use in blood glucose monitors, but it is equally suitable for any other high-performance, low-power application. It can be clocked at 14MHz (Ub = 1.8V) or 25MHz (Ub = 2.25V) and uses only 190µA at 8MHz and 2.2V. Maxim gives the values for the lowest power Stop Mode as typically 700nA, and in addition there is a Low Power 32kHz Mode and a Divide by 256 Mode.
It is important that the CPU is woken up in every case and this means that the sleep mode must not be too deep. A number of requirements have to be met before the CPU can start to work and among these is the presence of a clock frequency. The frequency can be supplied very quickly by an on-chip RC oscillator, up to 1000 times more quickly than by an external or an integrated quartz oscillator. For this reason, some low-power µCs use a dual startup in which the RC oscillator is used first to shorten the startup time and then later, when greater precision is required, the CPU takes its frequency from the quartz oscillator. Typical representatives of Low-Power µCs Three families of microcontrollers that can be compared with the least difficulty are manufactured by Microchip, NEC and Texas Instruments. They are summarised in Table 2 and, in the full text of the article available on the eTech website, we provide a short overview of them in alphabetical order. The values compared here were taken from the manufacturers’ data sheets. In Sleep Mode, the processor requires 2mA (12 MHz), which drops down to 6µA in Deep Sleep Mode and further to 220nA in Deep Power Down Mode. The 32-bit LPC1343 with Cortex-M3 core requires 330µA
Summary Choosing the right low-power microcontroller is a difficult task. In the end, it will be the application area that determines which type should be used. And often, rather than the bare technical details, it is environmental conditions, such as the size of the battery and the required peripherals, that determine the final choice. You have to take into account the size of the application, the type and the voltage of the battery (there is a trend to single battery cells), whether the battery fits into the application’s dimensions, the available power footprint and how easy it is to change batteries in the application. In addition, there is often no point in researching low power if low voltage is the critical criterion, e.g. to keep a clock running for a long time. The range of derivatives for the different microcontrollers is huge because of the differing application requirements outlined above. This means that developers will still have to trawl through the details of hundreds of pages of data sheets, especially since their marketing-driven front pages are often less than helpful. The large number of low-power microcontrollers described above indicates that this segment, which up to now has been dominated by Microchip, NEC and TI, is developing into a profitable niche market for a number of vendors.
Seiko Epson offers the S1C17701, a 16 Bit RISC µC with C-optimised code and serial ICE support. This controller too has LCD drivers for 56 x 32 segments as well as 64KB Flash and 4KB RAM. It is designed for clock frequencies up to 8.2MHz and the low operating voltage of 1.8V. Peripherals are comprehensive and among these, the IR controller deserves special mention. Low power values are given as 1µA in Sleep Mode and 2µA in Halt or Standby Mode. Silicon Labs has the C8051F93x/92x controllers in their product range. These can work with voltages from 0.9V to 3.6V and therefore target applications with one or two battery cells. In applications with one cell, a DC/DC converter is used. The 8051 core delivers 25 MIPS at 25MHz and 70% of all instructions are processed in one or two clock cycles. The controller with 10-bit ADC, 64KB or 32KB Flash and 4KB RAM features SmartRTClock, which means that, in addition to an internal 24.5MHz oscillator (2% accurate), it also provides an oscillator for 32kHz or an internal self-oscillate mode. The two clock sources can be switched on the fly, which is a useful feature for the different energy saving modes. Power consumption values for Idle Mode (CPU inactive) are 165µA at 1MHz and 1.8V or 235µA at 3.6V. When SmartRTClock is used, this reduces to 84µA. In the so-called Suspend Mode, the values are 77µA (two cells) and for Sleep Mode (SmartRTClock on) they are given as 0.6µA (1.8V), rising to 0.85µA at 3.6V. In absolute Sleep Mode, the values are 0.05µA (1.8V) or 0.12µA (3.6V). The SiLabs data sheet provides a formula for calculating the power that is drawn from the battery and this also includes the efficiency of the DC/DC converter. This should be taken into account for all controllers with DC/DC converters or load pumps. Apart from the above-mentioned low-power micros, there are models from Freescale (S08LL16 and V1 ColdFire) and STMicroelectronics (STM32F101x8/xB).
Get more online... For more information on the independent reviews carried out go to Design Review at www.rs-components.com/etech
eTech - ISSUE 4
37
CUSTOMER PROFILE
Q
uick
uestions
Key Facts Company Name
EquipIC supply chain
Year established
2005
Location
Haarlem, the Netherlands
Number of employees
12
Key market
Turn key supply chain services
Website
www.equipic.com
Interviewee name
Geert Jan Davids
Interviewee position
Founder and CEO
What is your latest product? We provide turnkey supply chain services for fabless semiconductor & system companies. What differentiates your products? Our ability to take customers from design (if needed), through manufacturing test and assembly through to volume production. EquipIC is differentiated with its strong background in all aspects of IC sourcing – Process selection, Design, Production, Test all based upon our excellent cooperation with Design teams, Foundries, Test & Assembly houses. What new technologies does your product employ? We employ the complete spectrum of foundry processes, including deep submicron down to 28nm How did you equip yourselves with knowledge of this new technology? We draw on our many years experience of supply chain services, as well as our close relationships with our partners. Combined with project management and in depth knowledge of all commercial aspects. Give an example of the impact one of your products has on, or the benefits it provides to, the end user. We’ve completed over 40 designs, in many cases taking over the silicon development and allowing our customer to focus on their own product development/IP development and marketing/sales. Projects have ranged from satellite terminals to hearing aids.
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eTech - ISSUE 4
Geert Jan Davids, Founder and CEO
How do you learn about new technologies? We generally find out about new foundry, packaging and test technologies before the open market generally through our close relationships with our technology partners. How do you gain new skills? The EquipIC team each has at least 20 years of experience of silicon development, test and assembly. We work continuously to ensure that our skills are kept up to date, adopting new design approaches and technologies as they emerge. What RS service do you find most useful in your job and why? If it’s on the RS website today as in stock, we know we can have it here in our lab tomorrow. What technology do you foresee having the biggest impact on your next product? Very high volume analogue rich designs using relative mature technologies such as 0.35u, 0.18u & 0.13u CMOS. What is the biggest threat to your business? The very high cost of the next generation of deep submicron processes puts them out of reach of some start up companies.
Where innovative products are just the beginning. Molex has a reputation for setting standards and paving the way for new solutions –– from the world’s smallest interconnects to some of the highest density power connectors on the market. And we do it all to ensure that our customers have the tools they need to deliver nextgeneration technology.
Where do you see your industry in 5 years? Very much larger as it is becoming increasingly difficult for end customers to deal with the fabs directly.
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But at Molex, innovation isn’t only about products. We’ve also taken an uncompromising stance on sustainability and environmental issues. We insist on ecofriendly business practices and have dramatically increased recycling efforts, reduced energy usage and emissions, and committed ourselves to developing products with minimal environmental impact.
At Molex, we put innovation at the center of everything we do — whether that means finding new ways to meet customer challenges or going beyond the call for the global environment.
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4
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eTech - ISSUE 4
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eTech - ISSUE 4
41
INDUSTRY NEWS
Robots get an artificial skin A mobile robot carefully transports a sample through a biotech lab where it is surrounded by the routine hustle and bustle. Lab technicians are conversing with one another and performing tests. One technician inadvertently runs into the robot, which stops moving immediately. An artificial skin covering the robot makes this possible. Consisting of conductive foam, textiles and an intelligent evaluation circuit, the sensor system detects points of contact and differentiates between gentle and strong contact. It registers people immediately. The shape and size of the sensor cells implemented in the skin can be varied depending on the application. They detect any contact. The higher the number of sensor cells, the more precisely a point of collision can be detected. A sensor controller processes the measured values and transmits them to the robot or, alternatively, a computer, a machine or production line. Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Factory Operation and Automation IFF in Magdeburg designed and patented this sensor system in 2008 for its assistant robot LiSA, which stocks incubators and measuring instruments in biotech labs with sample cups and relieves lab staff from such work. Since then the engineers have refined the sensor system for a wide array of applications such as industrial robots and flooring. Contact with humans or objects will be reliably detectable in the future, a basic prerequisite for the implementation of robots in human environments without protective barriers. “Our artificial skin can be adapted to any complex geometry, including curved or very flat. We use large-area floor sensors to define safety zones that people may not enter”, says Markus Fritzsche, researcher at the Fraunhofer IFF. “These areas can be changed dynamically.” The tactile skin now also functions as an input medium, for instance, to guide robots by translating contact into motion. “This requires little force. If I touch the robot, it attempts to evade the pressure. Thus, I can direct even a 200 kilogram robot in the desired direction”, says Fritzsche describing the system’s advantages. Another of the artificial skin’s distinctive features is the integrated damping elements that additionally diminish any collisions by cushioning impacts. Diverse variants of the tactile sensor system now exist, the shell material ranging from breathable to waterproof. “This opens entirely new fields of application such as medical engineering or manufacturing”, says Fritzsche. “Pressure sensitive flooring is ideal for monitoring workspaces in factories or instantly registering fallen patients in a nursing home for instance. Robots and mobile equipment outfitted with the artificial skin register any collision and brake immediately. In addition, we can provide robot grippers a sense of touch and thus detect whether they are actually gripping something.” Numerous variants of the artificial skin have been prototyped. Fritzsche is convinced: “We’ll encounter all sorts of forms of artificial skin in everyday life in the near future.”
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eTech - ISSUE 4
Pressure sensitive flooring detects people and slows or stops the robot’s movement. (© Fraunhofer)
“
Our artificial skin can be adapted to any complex geometry, including curved or very flat. We use largearea floor sensors to define safety zones that people may not enter”
”
Markus Fritzsche, researcher at the Fraunhofer IFF
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[email protected] Internet: www.rs-components.at
RS Components SAS Rue Norman King BP 40453 60031 Beauvais Cedex Tel: +33 3 44 10 15 00 Fax: +33 3 44 10 15 07 Internet: rswww.fr
RS Componentes Limitada Avda. Pdte. Eduardo Frei M. 6001-71 Conchalí, Santiago, Chile Tel: +(56 2) 668 1400 Fax: +(56 2) 668 1410 E-mail:
[email protected] Internet: www.rschile.cl
RS Components Ltd Suite 1601, Level 16, Tower 1 Kowloon Commerce Centre, 51 Kwai Cheong Road, Kwai Chung, Hong Kong Tel: +852 2610 2990 Fax: +852 2610 2991 E-mail:
[email protected] Internet: www.rshongkong.com
RS Components GmbH Hessenring 13 b 64546 Mörfelden-Walldorf Tel: +49 6105 401 234 Fax: +49 6105 401 100 E-mail:
[email protected] Internet: www.rsonline.de
Radionics Ltd., Glenview Industrial Estate, Herberton Road, Rialto, Dublin 12 Tel: +353 1 415 3123 Fax: +353 1 415 3111 E-mail:
[email protected] Internet: rswww.ie
Allied Electronics, Inc. 7151 Jack Newell Blvd. S, Fort Worth, Texas 76118, USA Tel: +1 800 433 5700 Tel: +1 817 595 3500 Fax: +1 817 595 6444 Internet: www.alliedelec.com
RS Components AB Box 21058 200 21 Malmö Tel: +46 (0)8-445 89 00 Fax: +46 (0)8-687 11 52 E-mail:
[email protected] Internet: www.rsonline.se
RS Components Co., Ltd. 209 K Tower A 8th Floor, Unit 083, Sukhumvit 21 Road (Asoke), Klongtoey Nua, Wattana, Bangkok 10110, Thailand Main Tel: +66 2 648 6868 Main Fax: +66 2 664 4228 Order Line: +66 2 648 6868 Order Fax: +66 2 664 2525 Technical Helpline: +66 2 648 6868 E-mail:
[email protected] Internet: www.rsthailand.com
Where RS is not represented by an Operating Company, RS International Sales can refer you to an appropriate RS Distributor or export products directly to you. With dedicated in-house freight forwarders and partnerships with global couriers, you can be assured of an unsurpassed delivery service. We also provide specialist hazardous packaging to IATA standards and organise your export documentation, ensuring fast and safe delivery of your goods.
RS Components Pty Ltd 25 Pavesi Street, Smithfield, Sydney New South Wales 2164 Tel: +61 2 9681 8588 Fax: +61 2 9681 8599 E-mail:
[email protected] Internet: www.rsaustralia.com
RS Components Pte Ltd 31 Tech Park Crescent, Singapore 638040 (RCB No. 199100430D) Main Tel: +65 6865 3400 Main Fax: +65 6865 3800 Order Line: +65 6865 3433 Order Fax: +65 6865 3444 Technical Helpline: +65 6865 3455 Technical Fax: +65 6865 3444 E-mail:
[email protected] Internet: www.rssingapore.com
RS Components Sdn Bhd (387407-M) Lot 12, Jalan Pensyarah U1/28, Seksyen U1 Hicom Glenmarie Industrial Park 40150 Shah Alam, Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia. Main Tel: +603 5032 9900 Main Fax: +603 5032 2033/2133 Order Line: +603 5032 1133 Order Fax: +603 5032 2033/2133 Technical Helpline: +603 5032 1233 Technical Fax: +603 5032 2233 E-mail:
[email protected] Internet: www.rsmalaysia.com
RS Components Ltd Units 30 & 31, Warehouse World, 761 Great South Road, Penrose, Auckland 1006 Tel: +64 9 526 1600 Fax: +64 9 579 1700 E-mail:
[email protected] Internet: www.rsnewzealand.com
To discuss your worldwide distribution requirements or for a quotation, including freight, contact RS International Sales: Email:
[email protected] Fax: +44 (0) 1536 209380 Tel: +44 (0) 1536 444215
Visit www.rs-components.com for details of our distributor network
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