News & Analysis
Sensor Platforms' Ian Chen: Context is king
Brian Fuller
11/21/2012 6:07 AM EST
Context is king, or at least will be as a world increasingly stitched together by sensors matures.
That's how Ian Chen, executive vice president of Sensor Platforms, views things from his perch, where EE Times has identified him as one of the 40 key technologists to watch in the coming years.
"You find all these apps that will help you find where you parked your car as long as you have the presence of mind to write down where you left it," Chen says. "If I have that much presence of mind, I don't really need the phone, do I? Why can't the phone figure out that you're now walking and that you parked your car right there? That's what we mean by user context."
Chen is part of a team that has transformed Sensor Platforms from a semiconductor company into a software company, one that aims to bring a lot of intelligence to your phone. In the spring of 2012, Sensor Platforms rolled out a library of software algorithms and middleware designed, according to company claims, to interpret users' contexts and intents by using data from multiple sensors in mobile devices.
Says Chen: "If you're like a typical office worker, you only use sensors 6 percent of your waking hours. We think the other 94 percent have some value as well. Sensors should really be working for you."
"We came to the conclusion that if sensors are going to be everywhere, then it comes to a point where we really need to get people together--rocket scientists talking to neuroscientists about what is the signal we really want to get, like muscle tension that tells the device you're holding the phone out in front of you."
Chen sees the "phone" as we know it today likely remaining the vital human-digital interface it's been in the early days of the smart phone's existence.
"Even Star Trek has a communicator badge. That's still a phone!" Chen said. "I think it's probably still going to be a human-to digital device. The only other device is an implant and I'm not sure I like that too much."
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Ian Chen
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GREAT-Terry
11/26/2012 10:19 AM EST
"As we build smarter tools, they makes us smarter" - Good phases! I hope one day my "phone" can really recognise why I pick it up and show me the necessary information by my gesture or simple speech.
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Mike Rosa
11/30/2012 9:53 AM EST
I completely Agree.
As MEMS and other sensors enjoy a period of increased uptake and acceptance by CE application designers, technologists begin to look to the future of MEMS and their application - e.g., the goal of One Trillion MEMS (unit and $). Applications/Concepts that may drive this level of volume will include 'Digital Cities', etc, that create the need for MEMS/Sensors everywhere or the idea of wearable MEMS or implantable MEMS. Many of these concepts readily exist in disciplines outside of the MEMS or Sensor industry and while the MEMS guys dream of high volumes driven by such applications, computer scientists and social scientists readily contemplate existing concepts like Social/Contestual Awareness and, possibly new concepts like the Social Area Network (SAN) or the 'Body Area Network' (BAN). Its my belief that we can do some very interesting, creative and commercially viable things today if we brought together the right team from these seemingly disparate disciplines to implement a solution that served (at least for now) a "particular" or "specific" solution - these "Sensor Cell" (SC) solutions could be later tied together in a broader network of SC's to realize the broader dream of a digital city or a Boday Area Network that communicated with other people around you to augment your own interactions - its very interesting stuff and it needn't be science fiction, much or all of what is needed is here today - whats missing is the vision to put the pieces together and build a use case scenario that will pioneer a demonstration of such technologies!
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