Smart Products

We are experienced in digital, analog, and RF circuit design. We have a complete set of electronic CAD tools that allow us to design, simulate, and lay out complex circuit boards. We also have in-house PCB fabrication, assembly, and rework facilities to speed up the circuit board development cycle. In addition, we have the tools and the expertise to do firmware development for CPLDs and embedded microcontroller systems.

• Particulate Sensor
• Fingerprint Capture Sensor
• Signature Verification Pen
• Innovative Power Tool
• Flat-panel Display

Particulate Sensor
A major automotive component manufacturer consulted SRI about uses for a novel piezzo fabrication technology. SRI held multidisciplinary innovation sessions followed by "culling" and analysis sessions to select the most promising ideas for further development. One of the ideas jointly selected was an oil quality sensor for automotive or other recirculating systems. SRI then designed, fabricated, and tested several laboratory prototypes and demonstrated that the concept could work in a realistic setting. This resulted in a breakthrough product with many potential recirculating oil applications requiring improved system reliability.

Fingerprint Capture Sensor
SRI assembled an engineering team to design and prototype an innovative optical fingerprint imaging system to provide high-contrast and high-resolution video imaging of fingerprints for biometric access applications. SRI designed a device that was physically smaller and demonstrated better performance than competing devices. The sensor was engineered for low-cost fabrication and was designed to be intuitive in operation.

Signature Verification Pen
SRI has invented a novel signature verification pen and related system that measures the forces used to sign one's name and uses the information to authenticate the signer. The system uses a feature set that characterizes the signature and compares the features of each new signature to the existing stored feature set to determine whether the signature is genuine. This algorithm had strict limitations on the size of the stored data, and it had a fairly random distribution of signing characteristics and a set of factors that introduced "noise" into the data stream. We were able to develop an algorithm that produced a 1.5% error crossover point.

Innovative Power Tool
A leading manufacturer of automotive assembly tools challenged SRI to develop a "reactionless" tool technology to help it reestablish its market leadership. SRI's engineers and scientists, working closely with the company's marketing and engineering departments, developed various concepts and evaluated them against the client's market needs. SRI finalized the concept and designed, fabricated, assembled, and developed a demonstration handheld prototype wrench. The reactionless wrench, based on an SRI technology breakthrough, met all the client's requirements. It provides accurate torque delivery and is reactionless: that is, the operator experiences no torque feedback during the tightening process. The latter feature that reduces the incidence of repetitive stress injury. This technology and product design can potentially apply to other lines of tools, creating even more market opportunities for the manufacturer.

Flat-panel Display. SRI has worked on the design and development of a large flat-panel display. We have designed the underlying proprietary display element and have worked on the electronics hardware and firmware to implement a large-scale prototype. This work involved the specification, design, fabrication, and debugging of all the systems between the XVGA display driver and the flat-panel display. We designed a high-speed, three-color digitizer, a CPLD-based data reformatter and color compensation board, and the driver hardware for the particular display type used. This work, though done for a prototype display, can be easily redesigned into an ASIC-based system.