Panorama Synergy’s Terry Walsh presages the age of sensors

Within 15 years, up to 100 trillion sensing devices could be connected to the Internet of Things. But will you feel safer?

Life illo

SPECIAL REPORT: Cracking the Code - how Australia is embracing the digital economy

VIDEO: How Australian start-ups can achieve world domination

GRAPHIC: How does Australia compare with the rest of the world?

QUIZ: How much do you really know about startups?

Technology supergiant Cisco’s former Australia boss Terry Walsh is sensing success. Walsh, who also successfully headed Cisco in Canada, is leading a push that could place Australia in the middle of the world’s oncoming multi-trillion-dollar revolution: sensors.

By 2030, as many as 100 trillion, or 100,000 billion, sensing devices could be connected to the internet in what’s called the Internet of Things. They would be able to sense everything from explosive conditions in mines to specific drugs at airports, as well as identify individual viruses in your work environment, determine your blood sugar level and even read the mood of an audience you are addressing — in real time.

These new sophisticated sensors will know when a machine component is about to wear out and accurately gauge whether a supermarket chicken really needs extra freezing, or whether the level of troponin in your blood could induce a heart attack.

Cisco estimates that the Internet of Things could be worth $19 trillion by 2020, more than 20 per cent of the global gross domestic product.

We’ve all been exposed to the existing crop of sensors: weather sensors, gyroscopes and accelerometers in phones, chemical sensors, pressure sensors, air quality sensors, fingerprint and heart rate sensors. But sensors are in the process of taking a quantum leap.

Walsh isn’t talking science fiction. He’s talking about what’s imminent, and how a partnership between scientists at the University of Western Australia and his firm Panorama Synergy could revolutionise the sensor industry.

“I’m not talking about the ­future, Star Trek-type stuff, this is stuff that will make economic sense now,” Walsh tells The Australian.

Each of these forthcoming sensors will measure one of thousands upon thousands of biological agents and chemical substances. And once full production is under way, they will be cheap to make. The sensors are so tiny that a circuit board the size of a thumbnail can contain a couple of hundred of them.

Walsh says a bunch of sensors in a single chip on an airport wall may be able detect different types of explosives, all kinds of drugs and illegal animal imports, as well as identify airborne diseases.

These new sensors will not only be on walls but on door handles or in hospital beds to track contagious bugs; they may be used next to airconditioners, on name tags and in more sophisticated police breathalysers. They will be in wearables, too.

“A Fitbit can tell you a few things,” Walsh says, “but if a Fitbit could monitor enough vital signs and send an alert to your doctor if something is seriously wrong, then your doctor would ring up and say: ‘I want you to come in right now.’ ”

He says Panorama Synergy is commercialising sensor technology that has been under development at UWA for two decades.

The research led UWA to develop a microscopic cantilever sensor system. Being able to monitor for a substance requires finding a second substance with which it bonds. For hydrogen, that is palladium, Walsh says.

After that, the mechanism is much the same. A laser detects the resulting tiny vibrations from that reaction.

Walsh says UWA isn’t the only facility developing what are called microelectromechanical systems, or MEMS. But it has done it differently. “It was a very visionary decision they took to invest in this area,” Walsh says. “When they started working on this, the capability of making these devices didn’t exist so they were somewhat ahead of their time.”

He says sensor technology is already an $86 billion global market, with the MEMS industry tipped to be worth $14bn a year worldwide.

While other sensors use cantilevers, Walsh says UWA’s sensors can measure how far the cantilever moves.

He says Panorama Synergy has been working with Gino Putrino, an associate professor with the university’s Microelectronics Research Group, to commercialise the venture and the project has received a $200,000 grant from the Australian Research Council. Panorama Synergy is matching it dollar for dollar.

Walsh says the initial step was to create an atomic force microscope, a special sensor able to detect almost a single atom. The next step was to set up manufacturing at a technology foundry.

Walsh says prototypes were made at a small foundry in November last year, and the sensors were found to work.

“At that stage we knew we had a winner, but the device in the lab hasn’t been manufactured like an end product,” he says.

Preparations are under way to outsource production to one of about 30 larger-scale technology foundries, mostly in Asia. Walsh says foundries for manufacturing hi-tech equipment are extremely expensive to build, typically costing between $1bn and $2bn. A production run could be up to 10 million items.

Initially Panorama Synergy and UWA were targeting employee safety in mining and industrial applications. “Employee safety applications is getting a lot of interest,” Walsh says. “After an underground explosion (for instance), sensors can determine whether the air is safe to breathe and people can return there.”

Walsh says sensors can be distributed all across a refinery to guard against gas leaks, and employees even can have one on their name badge.

At a mining site, the most obvious applications can involve testing for explosives, poisonous gases, drug abuse, alcohol use, environmental conditions, rust and benzines in nearby water supplies.

“What’s different now is that we can get the results instantly on-site, down a mining shaft or in a hospital bed.”

Walsh says benzines are a highly carcinogenic byproduct of a mining process called fracking. “The (Environmental Protection Agency) has a standard of how much can leak into the water. Well, current sensors can’t detect that.”

He says finding the best place for sensors will be a key issue. “For example, a child gets an asthma attack at 1am while the parents are asleep; if the child is wearing a mask, we could have a sensor in the mask. If the device is on the wall, it’s more complicated — you’ll have to analyse air flow, air volume, and that’s hopefully in the future.”

As for predicting a heart attack, it can be done now if the sensor can directly measure blood. “We can test fluids, but how do you get the blood to the cantilever? At this stage it’s still taking a blood sample from a patient. What we’re working on is being able to test someone’s blood in a non-invasive way, but we’re not quite there yet.”