1.1 Technology at Crossroads

This book concerns a particular class of Micro Electro Mechanical Systems (MEMS) device: Intelligent or smart sensors. The general area of MEMS is one that has been the subject of speculation and futurology over the past few years, some of which has been quite unhelpful in providing a real appreciation of the huge potential of this technology. In the first days when micro-machining became feasible, there were extreme predictions of the potential of the new technologies micromachines that would revolutionise every aspect of daily life were predicted, often based more on science fiction that any sober assessment of the capabilities of the technology. More recently, the futurologists have turned their attention to nanotechnology, MEMS being old news. Strangely, however, the prediction that MEMS technology would affect our daily lives has turned out to be entirely true, but the effect has been in ways both more subtle and profound than envisaged by the original forecasts. MEMS has indeed proved to be a potent technology and the application of MEMS that has been most important for the realisation of this potency has been sensors: sensing, a seemingly prosaic area of technology, has been revolutionised by MEMS to the extent that the basis has been laid for completely new types of engineering systems. There is now the possibility of designing complex MEMS based systems that are sensitive and reactive to their environment and able to respond and adapt to it. In turn, this responsiveness may be used to...