This column usually focuses on prosaic and proven applications for circuits and sensors. This month, though, I am going to talk about an emerging field called evolvable hardware, which potentially has tremendous applicability to designing robust sensing and control systems.

When someone with a static charge buildup touches an electronic device the damages to the IC are not difficult to detect. It's the secondary ESD effects that are hard to troubleshoot because they might not hit the IC.

Two recent market studies quantify the market for MEMS technology very differently. Both studies predict strong growth, but neither seems to touch on what I view as the true potential for microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) and micro-systems technology (MST).

You can change manufacturing setups without reprogramming the sensor, which is essential for highmix, low-volume manufacturing with frequent color changes.