Search for: All records

The goal of this paper is to provide a novel computing approach that can be used to reduce the power consumption, size, and cost of wearable electronics. To achieve this goal, the use of microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) sensors for simultaneous sensing and computing is introduced. Specifically, by enabling sensing and computing locally at the MEMS sensor node and utilizing the usually unwanted pull in/out hysteresis, we may eliminate the need for cloud computing and reduce the use of analog-to-digital converters, sampling circuits, and digital processors. As a proof of concept, we show that a simulation model of a network of three commercially available MEMS accelerometers can classify a train of square and triangular acceleration signals inherently using pull-in and release hysteresis. Furthermore, we develop and fabricate a network with finger arrays of parallel plate actuators to facilitate coupling between MEMS devices in the network using actuating assemblies and biasing assemblies, thus bypassing the previously reported coupling challenge in MEMS neural networks. 

This work presents an approach to delay-based reservoir computing (RC) at the sensor level without input modulation. It employs a time-multiplexed bias to maintain transience while utilizing either an electrical signal or an environmental signal (such as acceleration) as an unmodulated input signal. The proposed approach enables RC carried out by sufficiently nonlinear sensory elements, as we demonstrate using a single electrostatically actuated microelectromechanical system (MEMS) device. The MEMS sensor can perform colocalized sensing and computing with fewer electronics than traditional RC elements at the RC input (such as analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog converters). The performance of the MEMS RC is evaluated experimentally using a simple classification task, in which the MEMS device differentiates between the profiles of two signal waveforms. The signal waveforms are chosen to be either electrical waveforms or acceleration waveforms. The classification accuracy of the presented MEMS RC scheme is found to be over 99%. Furthermore, the scheme is found to enable flexible virtual node probing rates, allowing for up to 4× slower probing rates, which relaxes the requirements on the system for reservoir signal sampling. Finally, our experiments show a noise-resistance capability for our MEMS RC scheme.