Fairchild’s New IMU Has Attitude

The world's first consumer IMU to provide pitch, roll, and yaw specifications with Fairchild's AttitudeEngine motion processor.

Fairchild has long been known as a supplier of popular semiconductor solutions, but is now set to make its name in the MEMS market with its newest reveal. The FIS1100 IMU features Fairchild's proprietary AttitudeEngine™ microprocessor, which yields lower processing power consumption while at the same time providing an astonishing range of motion-enabled battery-powered applications. 

"The advanced algorithms and deep applications knowhow from the Xsens acquisition position us well in enabling our customers to develop advanced motion solutions in diverse, quickly-growing segments within markets such as consumer, industrial, and health," said Fairchild Chairman & CEO Mark Thompson.

The assumption in the current environment is to leap to the FIS1100's application in the wearables market, but advanced micro-electro-mechanicals that consume significantly less power than precious generations have myriad applications, from robotics integration to gaming platforms. In fact, as far as the latter goes, the biggest newsmakers at this year's E3 convention featured personal video games systems designed to function almost entirely on the kind of data MEMS like the FIS1100 provide.

The need for processing highly complex values is met by Fairchild's MEMS, which can process inertial sensor data along with its accelerometers and data from an external magnetometer. The sensor fusion also "includes background auto calibration that enables excellent performance in terms of accuracy, consistency, and fluidity." This is vital in the gaming world to provide an authentic experience and significantly more wow factor, but also necessary across several industries including health and navigation. 

As the FIS1100 is the world's first consumer IMU that provides pitch, roll, and yaw specifications, Fairchild has widened the opportunity for innovations by smaller companies and consumers, leading the world to wait for the inevitable revolutionary reveals to follow.