Systems Seminar: Prof. Ken Gabriel, Electrical and Computer Engineering Department and Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University

Microelectromechanical Systems

Abstract

As information systems increasingly leave fixed locations and appear in our pockets and palms, they are getting closer to the physical world, creating new opportunities for perceiving and controlling our machines, structures and environments. To exploit these opportunities, information systems will need to sense and act as well as compute. Investing engineered systems with the ability to sense and act is the focus for the impact microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) will have on the nature of engineering education and practice.

MEMS is a revolutionary enabling technology that merges computation and communication with sensing and actuation to change the way people and machines interact with the physical world. Using the same fabrication processes and materials that are used to make microelectronic devices, MEMS conveys the advantages of miniaturization, multiple components, and integrated microelectronics to the design and construction of integrated electromechanical systems. Widespread applications of MEMS include: miniature inertial measurement units for personal navigation, mass data storage devices, miniature analytical instruments, fiber-optic network switches, displays, electromechanical signal processing, on demand structural strength and distributed/unattended sensors for process, system and environmental monitoring.

The future and real promise of MEMS will be in our ability to design systems of components with thousands to millions of electromechanical parts integrated with electronics to create MEMS arrays that have a systems function greater than the sum of the individual parts. This next stage in the evolution and maturity of MEMS will be driven less by captive fabrication facilities and process development and more by innovative, aggressive electromechanical systems design. MEMS is poised to take full advantage of advances in information technology and couple them to advances in robotics and control theory to drive a fundamentally new approach to electromechanical system design and fabrication. For the first time, approaches akin to VLSI electronics can be taken to usher in an equally exciting and productive era of VLSI electromechanics.

MEMS will drive engineering education and practice to address: (1) orders of magnitude increase in the number of sensors and actuators in systems, (2) new control strategies to deal with million degree-of-freedom systems, (3) multiple, mixed energy domain simulation and analysis, and (4) hierarchical, component level abstractions for systems design and synthesis. By merging sensing and actuation with computation, MEMS will not only invest existing systems with enhanced capabilities and reliability, but will make possible radically new devices and systems designs that exploit the miniaturization, multiplicity and microelectronics of MEMS.

Speaker Bio

Kaigham J. Gabriel (Ken) is Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering and the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. He received his S.M. and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1985 he joined AT&T Bell Labs in the Robotic Systems Research Department, where he started the silicon MEMS effort, and led a group of researchers in exploring and developing IC-based MEMS for applications in photonic and network systems. During a sabbatical year from Bell Labs, Dr. Gabriel was a Visiting Associate Professor at the Institute of Industrial Science, University of Tokyo in Japan. After leaving Bell Laboratories in 1991, he spent a year as a visiting scientist at the Naval Research Laboratory transferring micromechanics processing technology to the Nanoelectronics Processing Facility. From 1992 to 1997, Dr. Gabriel was at DARPA, started and managed the Microelectromechanical Systems (MEMS) Program (1992-1996) taking it from zero to over $70M/year and over 80 projects in 1997; then as Deputy Director of the Electronics Technology Office (1995-1996), and finally as Director of the Electronics Technology Office (1996-1997) where he was responsible for roughly half of the Federal electronics technology investments totaling over $400M/year and spanning programs in advanced lithography, electronics packaging, MEMS, optoelectronics, millimeter and microwave integrated circuits, and high-definition displays.