Over the last three years the number of battery-operated electronic-component solutions for the Internet of Things (IoT) and Industrial IoT (IIoT) applications has been increasing steadily.

When developing industry forecasts, market analysts gather data from hundreds of companies to provide actionable insights on established technologies and to identify near-term business opportunities. As a developer of new MEMS and sensor technologies for a range of commercial applications, clients often ask us, “What’s going to be hot?”

SEMI-MEMS & Sensors Industry Group (MSIG) welcomed a global group of industry executives to its 14th annual MEMS & Sensors Executive Congress (MSEC), October 29-30, 2018 in Napa, Calif. MEMS and sensors represent a robust sector of the electronic industry.

Marcellino Gemelli, director of global business development at Bosch Sensortec, will present at the upcoming MEMS & Sensors Executive Congress on October 29-30, 2018 in Napa, Calif. SEMI’s Maria Vetrano caught up with Gemelli to give MSEC attendees a preview of Gemelli’s feature presentation.

Sensors are inextricably linked to the future requirements of partially and fully autonomous vehicles.

Self-driving cars have been all the rage in both the trade and popular press in recent years. I prefer the term “autonomous vehicles,” which more broadly captures the possibilities, encompassing not only small passenger vehicles but mass transit and industrial vehicles as well.

The MEMS industry has huge growth potential. Will MEMS fabrication act as a bottleneck to continued expansion or a critical conduit to achieving that potential?

How can consumer-product manufacturers tap the built-in capabilities of MEMS inertial sensors — which are already ubiquitous in end-user devices — to make the most of AI?

Smart speakers and voice assistants are already a big part of everyday life for many of us. Improvement in speech recognition accuracy obtained from advancements in natural language processing, machine learning and cloud computing technologies is driving the success of voice assistants.

As in life, knowing everything in MEMS and sensors is impossible. Often the best we can do is to “know the unknowns” because articulating what we do not yet understand allows us to seek answers so that we can stay competitive.