MET Sensors

Notes on the NYT article about HP/Shell cooperation

2010-02-16T11:50:00.000-08:00

I got several questions regarding articles in the recent NYT (see below). Here are my thoughts: There are two technologies in Seismic market: geophones and MEMS sensors (two biggest MEMS manufacturers are ION and Sercel). In spite of their introduction about 10 years ago and tens of millions of $$ spend on R&D and production, MEMS sensors are not leading technology, and the industry is still looking for an alternative solution. The MEMS sensors used in this industry are high performance and because of that are expensive and fragile (even the article below talks about "flexible silicon beams". Well, these beams tend to break if shaken making the whole thing useless. From what I know HP is not known for the high performance accelerometers, and I thought that the Shell/HP approach is to increase the quality of the data by dramatically increasing the number of sensors while using relatively low performance (cheap and robust) devices. Such approach would generate tons of data that would in turn be processed by powerful and wonderful HP servers and software. That would be equivalent of distributed computing where you have a bunch of low performance PC beating a supercomputer.

Potential trouble is that these low performance sensors might not be able to detect anything because they are not sensitive enough or have high noise. As result one would get a lot of useless and noisy data.
Need to wait and see what this is all about.

NYT article about Seismic Sensing

2010-02-16T11:48:00.000-08:00

Here is the article in NYT about Seismic sensing
Smarter Sensors Start Going to Work

By STEVE LOHR

In the last couple of years, the research laboratories at companies like Hewlett-Packard and Intel have been working on the next generation of digital sensors. They are smarter, smaller, consume less energy, and they can communicate wirelessly.

Their promise, writ large, is to help link the digital world of computing to the physical world as never before. The payoff would be to bring data-rich measurement, more intelligence and higher levels of optimization to all sorts of fields – including energy, traffic management, food distribution and health care. Lots of companies are working on parts of the broad vision, and I.B.M.’s “Smarter Planet” advertising campaign is the probably clearest articulation of the vision.

Royal Dutch Shell and Hewlett-Packard are announcing on Monday a step toward the mainstream use of next-generation sensor technology. The application – on-land oil and gas exploration – points toward the potential gains from advanced sensing systems.

No dollar figure is attached to the multiyear agreement, and Shell isn’t saying where it plans to first try this high-tech prospecting. But the oil company says the vastly more detailed seismic data collection and analysis should help it pinpoint new oil and gas reserves in difficult areas like under salt formations in the Middle East and deep pockets of natural gas in the North America.

Sensors are only one tool among the set of technologies needed in any number of industries. To make complex physical systems smarter also requires advances in storage, networking, data mining and analytics software. Still, the sensors are the vital measurement, data-harvesting and communications technology in the physical world – the digital eyes, ears and nose out there. The sensors may be an ingredient, but an essential one – just as the microprocessor may not be everything in computing, but it is the gateway technology that makes everything else possible.

In seismic prospecting for oil, big “thumper trucks” pound the ground to make sound waves that above-ground sensors then monitor. Today, 10,000 or 20,000 sensors, connected by wires, might be spread over an area 25 miles by 25 miles. With the Shell-H.P. sensing system, hundreds of thousands, up to a million, wireless sensors – about 3 inches by 4 inches – can be spread across a similar area. Each sensor, listening to the underground seismic echoes, is a data channel.

“If you can increase the number of data channels, the better you are able to listen,” explained Wim Walk, a geophysical scientist for Shell.

Hundreds of times more data will be generated with the new system. The raw data will be collected, mined and analyzed to create pictures of the geological formations and petroleum finds deep in the Earth.

Using the new technology, scientists say, opens the door to new levels of clarity – as in the difference between watching “Avatar” in 3-D or a regular theater screen.

The benefits, Mr. Walk says, should be more efficient oil production, with fewer dry wells and reduced environmental damage from drilling.

Recent advances in sensors, networking, storage and software, says Jeff Wacker, an H.P. fellow in the company’s services group, have made the H.P.-Shell venture practical. “We couldn’t have done this a few years ago,” Mr. Wacker said. “This represents a system of technologies coming together.”

Another article about accelrometers:
HP has developed an inertial accelerometer that's so sensitive, it can

detect a change in the position of its center chip of less than

one-billionth the width of a human hair.

The sensor is part of HP's unfortunately named CeNSE (Central Nervous System

for the Earth) program, whose aim is to build a "planetwide network" of tiny

sensors to measure anything and everything about the environment. It's the

first prototype in the CeNSE project, and it's safe to say they're starting

off on the right foot:

Hartwell's device is sensitive enough to "feel" a heartbeat. The source

of that sensitivity is a 5mm-square, three-layer silicon chip. A portion of

the center wafer is suspended between the two outer wafers by flexible

silicon beams. When the chip moves, the suspended center lags behind due to

its inertia. A measurement of that relative motion is used to calculate the

speed, direction and distance the chip has moved.

While the larger CeNSE project may have environmentalist overtones, the

first practical application is going to be from oil behemoth Shell. They'd

like to use the sensors to detect pockets of oil, allowing them to drill

more efficiently. Eventually, HP hopes to move to "city-level" projects that

digitally capture what the five senses do-and in some cases, what they

can't. And when they finally stuff that sucker in a Wiimote, Super Smash

Bros. will never be the same.

New low frequency seismic sensor has been introduced.

2009-11-11T13:15:00.000-08:00

We just introduced our new seismic sensor. MTLF 1040 has the performance the you can see on the site.

Couple of points on the device. There was a problem with the PC board design and power consumption is about twice the advertised level. We are working on redesigning the board and hope to be fully compliant with our specs in the next three to four weeks.

We are setting up the production capabilities that will allow us to produce op to a hundred sensors a month in about three to four months. Then we will be able to drop the price to $585. Eventually we would like to drive it down more.

Very gad that we finally have a real product.

Rotational sensors for seismic sensing

2009-07-08T12:22:00.000-07:00

I got several emails/call over the last month about creating something like a 6 DOF inertial unit for registering S and P waves during seismic sensing. People were interested in our angular Rate Sensors as components for such devices. as far as I understand the interest was to record rotational signals of about 10 ^( -8) radians / sec and greater. Bandwidth from a few HZ up to 100 HZ or more.
I am surprised by the fact that so many people are interested in this application simultaneously. People are talking about thousands of units.

2009-06-17T10:39:00.000-07:00

I am getting inquiries regarding the MET 1050 sensors that we advertised will be released in October.

I believe we are still on schedule to have commercial samples by then. The updated specs for the samples as follows:

MET 1050

Parameter
Operating principle	MET transducer with feedback
Natural frequency f_n	1 Hz
Tolerance	5 %
Maximum tilt angle for specified f_n	Omnidirectional
Distortion with 0.7 in/s p.p. coil-to-case velocity	0.1%
Distortion measurement frequency	10 Hz
Sensitivity*	300 V/m/sec
Tolerance	5%
Spurious frequency	400 Hz
Equivalent input noise	10 nm/sec/√Hz at 10 Hz; 3 nm/sec above 50 Hz
Power supply voltage	12 V
Power supply current	7.5 mA
Temperature Range	"-55ºC to +85ºC
Input limits	10 cm/sec at 60 V/m/sec scale factor
Dynamic Range	126 dB @4 msec
Frequency dynamic response	"+-0.25dB**"
Linearity Error	<-+0.1% of full scale
Geophysical Standard THD	better than 0.1%
Size and weight	TBD

*-Could be adjusted in the range of 30-300 V/m/sec

We are considering narrowing the band to 1-300Hz for the samples since it is just simpler to do at the them and will save us some time.

One can certainly put together three of the samples and create a threeaxis assembly.

Please let me know if you what to be put on a waiting list for the samples. bindler@mettechnology.com.

questions on sensors.

2009-05-15T11:24:00.000-07:00

In the next couple of days I will put some question that people ask about the sensors.

Inertial sensors.

2009-04-13T12:12:00.000-07:00

hi, I am starting this blog to provide more convenient and up to date forum for exchanging information and answering questions related to our sensor technology. I am CEO of MET Tech that has developed a novel inertial sensing technology. Our products include linear and angular accelerometers, velocity meters, inclinometers, as well as gyroscopes. They are used in a broad range of industries such as oil and gas exploration, homeland security, aerospace and automotive industries and in numerous applications, including guidance, navigation, control, safety systems, and robotics. They operate in mobile devices (including cell phones), lap-top computers, gaming consoles and many other consumer goods.

Please visit our website at www.mettechnology.com for information on the company and its products.
Other possible sources of information could be http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rate_sensor
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molecular_Electronic_Transducers and the others.

Will post soon.
Jacob