STMicroelectronics Launches Energy-Efficient Smart Inertial Measurement Unit to Provide Longevity Guarantee for Industrial Products

Vibration monitoring and motion tracking applications for industrial equipment and robotics

China, June 20, 2024 - STMicroelectronics' 6-axis inertial measurement unit (IMU) ISM330BX integrates an edge AI processor, a sensor expansion analog hub, and a Qvar charge change detector, and provides a product lifetime guarantee, making it suitable for designing energy-efficient industrial sensors and motion trackers.

The new IMU has a built-in 3-axis gyroscope and a 3-axis accelerometer, a low-noise architecture, and a bandwidth of up to 2kHz, making it suitable for vibration sensing in machine tool condition monitoring . Other uses include industrial robots, home robots, intelligent feeder vehicles (AGVs), smart appliances, and motion trackers.

The ISM330BX also integrates ST's edge processing engine. The edge processor integrates a machine learning core (MLC), artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms, and a finite state machine (FSM), which can reduce the amount of computing on the main processor and reduce system energy consumption. The IMU is also embedded with ST's 3D orientation tracking sensor fusion low power (SFLP) algorithm, which can improve the energy efficiency of applications such as robots and smart helmets. Through the adaptive self-configuration (ASC) function, the sensor can also automatically optimize settings in real time for optimal performance and power consumption.

The autonomous functions of the ISM330BX can reduce the amount of data transmission between the IMU unit and the host system, and reduce the computing workload of the main processor, ensuring low latency and low power consumption. The integrated analog hub can directly connect external analog sensors to the edge processing engine for data filtering and AI reasoning, providing more opportunities for energy-efficient system integration. The many energy-saving features of the ISM330BX can help engineers realize innovative battery-powered smart devices such as industrial sensors, upgrade existing industrial assets, improve the level of intelligence, and welcome the arrival of Industry 5.0.

The IMU also has a built-in STMicroelectronics Qvar charge change detector, which supports application integration of value-added functions such as touch detection and proximity detection or water leakage detection, thereby improving system integration and energy efficiency.

The release of ISM330BX promotes the development of industrial MEMS technology and further enriches the MEMS development ecosystem by providing basic hardware such as the STEVAL-MKI245KA adapter board. Free software resources are also available on the GitHub website, including MEMS Studio and ready-made application examples, providing developers with a collaborative and innovative development environment.

The ISM330BX IMU was unveiled at the Sensor and Test 2024 event in Nuremberg, Germany, revealing the future of industrial motion sensing. At the launch event, STMicroelectronics delivered an insightful keynote speech discussing the technical innovations of the ISM330BX in robot monitoring and its potential to change the future of motion sensing applications. A special demonstration was a highlight of the event, where attendees were able to see firsthand the outstanding capabilities of the ISM330BX in anomaly detection applications.

The ISM330BX is part of STMicroelectronics' 10-year industrial component product life assurance program and is now in mass production.