For young innovative companies, the automotive market is one of the hardest businesses to enter. The time from product idea to actual production can take many years. Automotive companies have rigorous testing standards, as people expect their cars to be safe and to last for many years.
These challenges make the successes of iee that much more impressive. Founded in 1989 in Luxembourg, IEE developed printed sensors based on force sensing resistor technology for industrial and medical applications. Then a rare chance to enter the automotive market came in the early 1990s; IEE seized the opportunity and has never let go.
IEE CTO Alain Schumacher said that automotive companies considered IEE’s sensing technology because of insurance companies looking for ways to cut costs on car repairs.
“Insurance companies in Germany told vehicle manufacturers they needed a system to prevent airbag deployment if no one was in the passenger seat,” Schumacher recalled. “This would reduce vehicle interior repair costs by preventing airbag deployment if no one was in the front passenger seat.”
“The idea was to create a flexible network of pressure-sensitive cells, smartly integrated directly under the seat trim, to enable a reliable Passenger Presence Detection,” said Schumacher. “IEE pioneered occupant detection in vehicles and this brought us into the automotive market.”
Pressure-sensitive sensors were, back then, an ideal application for the young company. By 1992, IEE’s Passenger Presence Detection (PPD) started to be fitted to cars and served as the cornerstone for IEE becoming an automotive supplier.
“It is a tough market,” he observed. “The market is regulation-driven. There are many certifications. You need to prove product robustness over car lifetime under a versatility of harsh environmental and use case conditions. Full traceability of production data as well as liability relevance, while maintaining high volume production, are further challenges.”
“Being just a foil sensor mat producer was not a sustainable business model for us” he continued. “We had to develop service competencies from lab to fab. We had to earn the trust of the automotive industry – at the very beginning, you can imagine there was no experience as to how these materials and technology would work in a car. This was new on the market.”
Since then, IEE has developed a number of systems that are everyday features in our vehicles. In 1997, the company perfected its occupant detection sensor for Seat Belt Reminder systems.
In 2001, the company launched its Occupant Classification system, a legal requirement for the US market, which automatically disables front passenger airbag deployment when child seats are present. In 2013, IEE introduced Hands Off Detection, which allows the driver assistance system to alert the driver to take back control of the steering wheel. Also, IEE has developed a multitude of other sensor applications and electronics for the automotive as well as the none-automotive market.
Not every system is printed: IEE’s VitaSense system addresses vehicular heatstroke of infants through radar technology, and LiDAS (Life Detection Assistance System) addresses the same issue in school buses, using a network of radar sensors and connectivity technology to send warning messages if a child is left alone in the vehicle.
“We have quite a versatile portfolio of products and technologies. We always target to develop function-oriented, using technologies adjacent to our core-competencies but being never afraid to follow new technology paths to enable new disruptive applications. That’s how radar and 3D camera technology became a firm part of our today competencies,” Schumacher said.
IEE is a leading manufacturer of safety sensors in car seats. Based on this expertise, IEE took up the challenge to develop novel foil-based screen-printed car seat heaters with an inherent overheat control.
“Inherent power self-limitation was achieved via a strong so-called PTC (Positive Temperature Coefficient) effect occurring at a specified safe temperature. This was obtained via a specific ink formulation developed with our ink supplier partner. The PTC-heater can never overheat and thus prevents burning injury risks to diabetic and paraplegic occupants. It displays strong heating up performance combined with a sharp stop – the disruptive novelty in the world of printable PTC ink systems. We are also using the technology now within the scope of battery management systems for e-vehicles, and other adjacent applications.”
IEE’s main market is automotive – more than 95% of its products go into cars, and IEE delivered 36 million parts to its automotive customers in 2020.
IEE is also developing medical and healthcare products, including its new ActiSense sensor. “ActiSense is an insole sensor that collects data while the user is walking. It is ideal for rehabilitation, elderly care, in situ monitoring of the disease evolution of Alzheimer and Parkinson patients, and diabetic foot care,” Schumacher noted. ”Developing tools and methodologies for data analyses help physicians and therapists to adapt the treatment in order to mitigate disease progress and impacts.”
Printed electronics remain a core technology for IEE, and Schumacher observed there are plenty of advantages to the technology.
“The big advantages are cost efficiency and high design freedom,” he said. “You create a mesh and take your ink and print it. Also, you can create any design you want to realize high-performance sensors.”
Schumacher said that IEE’s experience in all facets of printed electronics and the strong commitment to innovation and entrepreneurship is key to its success.
“In the world of printed electronics, I think the difference is that very few companies have been doing this for a long period of time,” he noted. “We service the customer. Everything you get with the sensor is from us, from concept to product development, testing in the labs to production. We create the hardware, software and material science. We are always focused on function, and not just the technology.”
“I believe printed electronics will be a core technology going forward,” Schumacher concluded. “We are also looking at a printed battery management system and working on next-generation automotive sensing technologies. We see medical and health care being an important market. Printed electronics will remain a very cost-competitive flexible technology for fulfilling multiple design needs.”
