Disruptive technologies are characterized by enabling professionals with ordinary skills to create products that until then required scarce and expensive specialists and extraordinary skills and capabilities. Sentera’s technology is transforming the motion-sensing and motion-awareness design paradigm from an esoteric art to a ubiquitous practice and makes using MEMS sensors simple and straightforward. By providing a complete solution, Sentera Technology enables engineers who do not have special expertise in MEMS systems design to create and implement products quickly and efficiently.

Sentera’s novel approach consists of motion-aware chips combined with a development environment that allows non-experts to select and use the complex algorithms necessary to extract useful data from the various sensors. The use of advanced motion sensing algorithms allows system designers to deliver a consistently high level of performance using commercial sensors. Sentera’s technology works with all commercial sensors, allowing designers to select from a large variety of options.

The modern era of miniaturized sensor technology dates back to the 1960s. Research and development in academic institutions such as Stanford University and UC Berkeley drove rapid advances in transducers and sensor technology. Initially, microsensors were capable of measuring only a limited set of properties. Today, microsensors can measure a wide array of physical and non-physical variables including acceleration, pressure, force, torque, flow, magnetic field, temperature, gas composition, humidity, acidity, fluid ionic concentration and biological gas/liquid/molecular concentration.

The commercialization of microsensors started only when it became possible to manufacture them in mass quantities using traditional IC manufacturing processes. In the micro electromechanical systems (MEMS) fabrication process, layers of silicon are deposited on a substrate. Each layer is a cross section of the desired three-dimensional structure. After the appropriate number of these layers is deposited, they go through an etching process, clearing the cavities in the planned structure, in a step called "release". At the end of this stage, free-standing three-dimensional structures are created, with flexible or moving parts.

MEMS sensors technology has created a host of sensors that sport attractive features and characteristics. Those include:

	Small size: MEMS sensors are fabricated using integrated circuit technology, generating sensors sized at a few hundred microns. The packaged sensors sport a very small footprint.
	Reliability: the mechanical properties of silicon, the base material for MEMS sensors, are excellent. As a result, MEMS sensors work without performance degradation over very long periods of time, leading to low cost of ownership and operation.
	Ruggedness: MEMS sensors can operate in a wide range of environments and withstand shocks of more than 1000g.
	Cost: improvements in manufacturing technologies and constantly increasing production volumes resulted in the availability of sensors covering a range of dynamics parameters at attractive price/performance ratio.

The first and, to date, leading mass-market application of MEMS motion sensors is in the automotive market. Vehicle manufacturers were interested in a cheap, accurate and reliable airbag release trigger. Today, virtually all air-bag mechanisms rely on MEMS accelerometers in their operations.