Embedded Technology 2013 - From Japan with Love

On November 20-22, the annual exhibition of achievements of Japanese companies in the field of embedded solutions ( ET2013 ) was held in Yokohama.

Most companies talked about M2M, sensors, energy harvesting, energy efficient wireless communications and big data. This is not surprising, since The Japanese industry as a whole promotes the ideas of a “smart” home / building / car / health and anything else.

And as soon as all this turns out to be connected to the Internet (the notorious “Internet of Things”), big data comes on the scene. Analysis of which, in turn, makes things even more "smart".



I’m too lazy to engage in deep analytics and dig into advertising brochures (also in Japanese), so I’ll just show some cool and interesting things from the exhibition. Not every one of them represents a technological breakthrough, but it's nice to see something that really works out of the box.

G-shock

Almost all the gadgets worn on the hand (including recent crafts from Samsung, Sony, and others) looked rather awkward and more than once were called “solutions for nothing”. Perhaps the only exception was the Casio G-Shock. These are wristwatches that look like wristwatches, however, supporting Bluetooth Low Energy connection with iPhone and Android phones.

The market is still completely unprepared for a variety of wearables (wearables), but for good watches there was a place, as indicated by successful sales.

The watch serves as a kind of “remote control” for the phone, reports on the arrival of mail, and has a number of other functions. Without all this, you can certainly do without, but life becomes more comfortable, especially in some situations.

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Built-in M2M module and white slippers

NEC introduced the embedded M2M module for connecting the real world with the "cloud". Thanks to the device for collecting the energy of vibration, the module does not require a power source. And the photo shows a pair of shoes where this module is embedded. When, for example, an elderly person living alone puts on his shoes and goes somewhere, then the employees of the relevant social or medical services know his whereabouts.

Check your punch

In Japan, such a sport as golf is extremely popular. Therefore, it is not surprising that one of the companies presented a module that is mounted on a golf club.

Integrated sensors (gyroscope, accelerometer and magnetometer), as well as an ARM-based microcontroller, allow the module to track orientation, linear and angular acceleration. Using such a device, the player gets the opportunity to visualize each of his blows on the screen of a phone or tablet, to examine in detail, to analyze ...

Noise reduction for everyday needs

NEC introduced a new noise reduction algorithm called EuphoMagic. The algorithm is aimed at suppressing background wind noise (natural wind, fans, air conditioners, etc.) accompanying voice gear. It is argued that, unlike other solutions, engineers managed to make a breakthrough in overcoming the difficulties associated with the variability of the wind and its low-frequency nature.

StarPixel

And this is a proprietary algorithm for compressing still images of super-high expansion, developed by the same NEC several years ago.

The algorithm, called StarPixel, was used by the Japanese Aerospace Research Agency for the Venus climatic probe AKATSUKI. While JPEG 2000 took about 60 seconds for lossless compression of large images, StarPixel coped in one second.

StarPixel, based on fast wavelet transform technology, solves two problems typical of JPEG: block noise and image degradation.

Now, this algorithm is also used by another Japanese agency responsible for monitoring the situation on highways. According to NEC, it allows you to continuously capture, process and store pictures of a car moving at a speed of 100 km / h.

Hibot

Want to know what's going on inside the ventilation or sewer pipe?

HiBot corp. Developed a snake-like robot "Pipetron", equipped with a whole bunch of sensors. The robot climbs into places where a person can not pass (or does not want to mediate). At the same time, he will take with him the tools for inspection, repair, or even drag there less adapted to hard-to-reach places of the robot.

mruby for embedded

Ruby (dynamic, object-oriented programming language) got a younger brother - mruby, specially designed for embedded systems.

The target audience for mruby is game developers, embedded applications, and server applications with a small memory-footprint.

Unlike Ruby, which runs on a PC with a gigahertz CPU and gigabytes of RAM, mruby is 40MHz enough and even less, and the memory occupied is only 150KB. The mruby virtual machine was tested on popular boards with Armadillo and Raspbery Pi and confirmed the stated numbers. And the virtual machine demonstrated at the exhibition also fit in 32KB.

3D Point Cloud

Texas Instruments has demonstrated a device based on a stereoscopic camera and an eight-core DSP, which is designed to measure the coordinates of a large number of points on the surface of a three-dimensional object. At the output of the device, points are represented as a file with XYZ coordinates.



In this image, point cloud is used to visualize the distance to various people facing the device. People standing closer are depicted in yellow-red shades, those that are far away, in shades of blue.

It is expected that this technology will be used in systems that help driving a car.



Similar image analysis and pattern recognition technologies are also in Intel’s area of ​​interest. In the context of creating new types of interfaces and ways to interact with the computer. True, Intel is still busy with the software side of the problem, creating the Perceptual Computing SDK .



It remains to be noted that many of the presented hardware solutions (watches, M2M for shoes, kick analyzer, ...) use microcontrollers and processors based on ARM architecture. And some devices also have additional specialized chips in order to further reduce power consumption. For example, the G-Shock watch uses a Lapis Semiconductors Bluetooth module, the power consumption of which at the time of the transfer is stated at the level of <10mA.



This situation is explained by the fact that, until recently, Intel did not show interest in the embedded market, focusing efforts on desktop computers and servers. Meanwhile, reducing power consumption is precisely an area where Intel can give a lot of points ahead to its competitors through advances in process technology and a number of other areas. And ARM-architecture should not be an obstacle, because Intel is already producing ARM-based chips for a number of its customers as part of Intel Foundry.



It is easy to imagine that the same ARM microcontrollers or Bluetooth modules can be manufactured by Intel using 22nm technology (or even 14nm) with the corresponding gain in power consumption, all other things being equal.

Another thing is whether it will be possible to make such a chip cheap enough to be attractive, but this is another story ...



That's all, thank you for your attention.



Intellectual sponsors of the post - ET2013 and eetimes.