The evolution history of domestic sensors highlights the gap

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In some key places, biometrics has been widely used as a front-end of access control. These biometrics include facial recognition, palm shape, fingerprint, iris and other methods. Among them, fingerprint recognition is the most widely used method of all biometric technologies in the world, accounting for about 50%. At present, with the continuous innovation, development and maturity of computer image processing and pattern recognition theory and large-scale integrated circuit technology, the fingerprint automatic recognition system has attracted much attention in the fingerprint sensor market due to its continuous reduction in size, continuous reduction in price, and a significant increase in market demand.

The appearance of Apple's new generation of mobile phones, iPhone 6 and smart watches, has given many followers of Apple phones around the world another reason to queue up all night. What gives Apple phones more and more powerful functions is not only the increasingly powerful chips, but more importantly, the increasing number and more sophisticated fingerprint sensors on the phones. Not only in mobile phones, but also in cars, home appliances, wearable devices, and industrial automation, more and more sensors have become the "eyes and ears" of machines.

So, let us go back to the basics and take a look at the market history of sensors at home and abroad.

At present, with the advent of the Internet of Things era, various sensors are becoming ubiquitous neurons, and the global demand for sensors has begun to show explosive growth. However, on the eve of this feast, the industry regretfully discovered that China seems to have fallen behind again.

As sensor giants such as Bosch in Germany and Honeywell and Freescale in the United States enjoy the benefits brought by their "accumulation of strength and development", how can Chinese companies get a share of the benefits?

Before the concept of sensor "emerged", there were actually sensors in early measuring instruments, but they only appeared as a component in a complete set of instruments. Therefore, before 1980, the textbooks introducing sensors in China were called "Electrical Measurement of Non-Electrical Quantities".

The emergence of the concept of sensor is actually the result of the gradual modularization of measuring instruments. Since then, the sensor has been separated from the entire instrument system and studied, produced and sold as a functional device.

According to the working principle of sensors, they can be divided into two categories: physical sensors and chemical sensors. Physical sensors use physical effects to convert small changes in the measured signal into electrical signals, such as piezoelectric effect, magnetostriction, ionization, polarization, thermoelectric, photoelectric, magnetoelectric and other effects.

Chemical sensors are sensors that use chemical adsorption, electrochemical reactions and other phenomena as causal relationships. In recent years, biosensors made using various biological characteristics have emerged to detect and identify chemical components in organisms.

Strictly speaking, sensors are not a single discipline, because sensors are studied in various disciplines. New sensors made based on newly discovered physical phenomena and chemical effects are actually secondary developments of basic research results in other disciplines. With the rapid development of electronic circuit technology, more and more measurement problems are concentrated on the sensor link. Ultimately, the performance of the sensor determines the performance of the entire measuring instrument. This is the most important driving force for the development of sensors.

The sensor market is actually driven by applications. For example, in the chemical industry, the market for pressure and flow sensors is quite large; in the automotive industry, the market for speed, acceleration and other sensors is very large. Acceleration sensors based on micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) are now relatively mature technologies, and have contributed greatly to the demand for the automotive industry.

MEMS (Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems) refers to micro devices or systems that can be mass-produced and integrate micro-mechanical structures, micro-sensors, micro-actuators, and communications. It is small in size, light in weight, low in cost, low in power consumption, and highly reliable. It is suitable for mass production, easy to integrate and realize intelligence, and can also achieve functions that some traditional mechanical sensors cannot achieve.

Google has spent five years developing self-driving cars, which have no accelerator pedals, brake pedals or rearview mirrors, but instead rely on internal sensors and onboard computers to control the car's operation.

With the help of various sensors, the Internet, which used to be between people, has been extended and expanded to between any objects.

In 1999, the International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking held in the United States proposed that "sensor networks are another development opportunity facing mankind in the next century"; in 2003, the American "Technology Review" proposed that sensor network technology will be the top ten technologies that will change people's lives in the future.

In 2005, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) released the ITU Internet Report 2005: Internet of Things. The report pointed out that the era of ubiquitous "Internet of Things" communications is coming, and all objects in the world, from tires to toothbrushes, from houses to paper towels, can be actively exchanged through the Internet. Radio frequency identification technology (RFID), sensor technology, nanotechnology, and intelligent embedded technology will be more widely used.

FORRESTER, an authoritative consulting agency in the United States, predicts that by 2020, the ratio of the world's Internet of Things business to the business of human-to-human communication will reach 30 to 1. Therefore, the "Internet of Things" is called the next trillion-level communication business.

M2M connects things to achieve real-time communication between people and things, and things and things. It is the most direct way to realize the Internet of Things.

M2M technology can ensure the safety of expensive goods during transportation, monitor the location and temperature of refrigerated containers in transit, remotely diagnose the status of the engine, and car owners can also receive real-time navigation and traffic information.

According to AT&T's assessment, the number of global M2M connections will reach 50 billion by 2020. In fact, as M2M solutions mature and the cost of communication and sensor equipment decreases, the Internet of Things will gradually penetrate into various industries.

The global interconnection of machines such as automobiles, machinery, and large equipment, using new analytical technologies and business intelligence solutions, can extract more valuable information from massive data and provide customers with more value-added services.

"The core and foundation of the Internet of Things is the sensor," Ye Tianchun, director of the China Internet of Things Research and Development Center, told Caixin reporters. Without sensors, there is no way for machines to automatically sense information. It is precisely because of the addition of sensors to the network that the concept of the Internet of Things was proposed.

Look at the gaps in China's sensor industry

As a cutting-edge technology in modern science and technology, sensors are considered to be one of the three major pillars of modern information technology and are also recognized both at home and abroad as the most promising high-tech industry.

However, as sensors usher in their spring, what the Chinese public seems to see is still a feast for foreign semiconductor giants.

Industry insiders believe that although China's sensor market is developing rapidly, there is still a big gap between local sensor technology and the world level.

This gap is manifested in the backwardness of sensors in perceiving information, and in the backwardness of sensors in intelligence and networking. Due to the lack of large-scale applications, domestic sensors are not only low-tech but also expensive, making it difficult to be competitive in the market.

Dong Yonggui, professor of the Department of Precision Instruments at Tsinghua University, said that China began to pay attention to the research of sensor technology roughly after 1980. After years of efforts, the development level of sensor research is relatively good. However, the technological progress in productization is not very ideal. For many sensor technologies, the research level of domestic laboratories is not very poor, but unfortunately they have not been fully utilized and have not been transformed into mature products entering the market.

He said that the research of sensor technology requires a relatively long time of investment. It takes 6 to 8 years for a sensor to mature. Generally, Chinese companies cannot afford such a long period of time. Chinese companies can hardly afford failure, and the risk of failure in sensor research is very high.

According to what Dong Yonggui learned during his visit to Japan, many of the R&D projects supported by Japanese companies cannot be turned into products, but the companies can afford it as long as 2 to 3 out of 10 can be turned into products.

"In contrast, many of our companies are prepared to take what others already have." Dong Yonggui said that this kind of thinking is problematic, including that we always want to introduce foreign talents who have their own projects. "They are not prepared to raise fish, but to catch a fish."

Compared with large-scale instruments and equipment, sensors generally require less investment in the productization process, so they are more suitable for small enterprises to invest in. In this regard, China should have an advantage. However, if we consider it from another perspective, this is also a disadvantage.

One characteristic of the sensor industry is that the sensor itself has high technical content, but the price of a single sensor is generally not high. One result of this characteristic is that although the technical added value of sensors is high, it is difficult to generate considerable output value by relying solely on sensors.

According to Professor Dong Yonggui's analogy, sensors are a bit like the "medicine guide" in traditional Chinese medicine. Their own functions are important, but they still need to rely on the whole medicine to achieve scale. Once many foreign sensor companies have a breakthrough in a certain sensor, they will soon develop related measuring instruments.

Moreover, under China's patent protection mechanism, the key technologies developed with great effort in sensors often present a kind of "know-how". After being copied, it is difficult to explain clearly, and the enterprises cannot afford to sue. Although there are MEMS sensor enterprises in China, they are all commissioned for processing. If things go wrong, the processing enterprises may take them over and make them themselves. The current enterprise innovation system has big problems.

In 2012, a senior in the domestic sensor field said at a conference that the reason why China's sensor industry was not developing well was because it lacked leaders who could give lectures at the State Council. The research and development time in this field was long and it was not prominent enough. It was a very small thing in itself, and the physical phenomena it was based on were discovered decades or hundreds of years ago.

The scholar pointed out that this kind of research is actually very hard. For example, there is an accelerometer used in the oil industry to measure seismic waves. It is based on a principle proposed by the Soviet Union decades ago. However, it was not until the expert went to the United States after the collapse of the Soviet Union that the product was developed and applied.

"The more areas require accumulation of experience and extensive sowing and thin harvest, the greater the gap between us." Dong Yonggui believes that the gap is now tending to widen further.

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