David Allan
President, Virtuix Inc.

个人简介

David Allan 毕业于滑铁卢大学电子工程专业，拥有在复杂电子、机械和光学行业20多年的丰富运营管理经验。曾经在全球著名的电子专业制造服务供应商——伟创力参与率领团队在台湾和中国大陆成功开创了企业新局面。

任职伟创力期间，David负责两个部门的供应链管理，每年为公司实现3.5亿美元的销售额。从伟创力离开后，David加入了旭源电子，旭源电子创始于美国，如今已成为全球高效电源和LED行业的领导者。David作为该公司珠海工厂的法定代表人，创立了其在中国的工厂，并率领其发展为拥有200多个员工的企业。

2013年，David加入Virtuix任职公司总裁，旨在解决虚拟实境领域一直存在的挑战：如何实现在虚拟世界的自由移动。Virtuix Omni™ 是一个虚拟现实平台，它可以让您360度自由走动、奔跑和跳跃，让您的思想和身体都沉浸在虚拟的世界里。Virtuix于2013年6月在Kickstarter上正式发布Omni后，很快就产生了110万美金的预付款销售额, 从那时候开始，Virtuix从美国投资者手中获得了800万美金的投资。Omni将于2016年开始量产。

摘要

How Entertainment, Automotive, and Voice Will Fuel New Demand for MEMS and Sensors

The rise of the smartphone has driven massive uptake of MEMS and sensors. Yet as smartphone penetration reaches an ever-greater share of the world’s population, demand for smartphone sensors, while still huge, won’t grow nearly as fast as before. So what’s next for the industry?

The answer lies in the shift from cloud to edge. Computing, in the early years, was centralized (the days of the mainframe). As PCs took over, it moved to the edge. Then in recent years, the rise of the cloud pulled it back to the center. Now it’s set to return to the edge. And whereas PCs, the first devices to inhabit the edge, did not need sensors, new edge devices — which must measure the world and react in real-time — require sensors in vast variety and quantity.

These new edge-computing devices will change the way we live and work, in the process generating huge new demand for MEMS and sensors. Three areas will drive especially high growth:
  • Automotive. The autonomous car is a datacenter on wheels, the ultimate IoT machine. And it needs A LOT of sensors. To deliver the low latency and accuracy needed for safety, sensor fusion will redundantly blend outputs of sensors of all kinds: optical, acoustic, inertial, and positional.
  • Voice. Amazon’s Echo and similar voice-operated systems from Google and Microsoft will penetrate our homes, linking in turn to thousands of other devices, all needing sensors.
  • Entertainment. Edge computing will bring us “mixed reality” — the blending of the virtual and real worlds — that requires precise mapping of our physical environment.

The presentation discusses the above sources of demand, including a fully worked supply-chain example of the third category, a virtual reality system that uses more than 100 magnetic, inertial, and optical sensors.