This video is from Phoenix Satellite TV's "Century Lecture Hall", the speaker is Academician You Zheng, academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and chairman of the China Instrument and Control Society, and the theme is "Sensors: The Key "Stuck Neck" Technology to be Overcome".
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Academician You Zheng is a well-known expert in China's sensor and micro-nano technology, this video is based on his profound professional quality, and at the same time, in simple terms, to the mainland public science sensor knowledge, mentioning some of the more acute problems in China's sensor industry, to many friends who rarely understand the development of science and technology in the mainland, expounding the situation faced by the mainland sensor industry. Highly recommended!
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You Zheng, Academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, President of Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Chairman of the 10th China Instrument and Control Society, Chairman of the Chinese Society of Micro and Nanotechnology, his main research direction is micro and nano technology, intelligent microsystem technology and its applications.
Phoenix TV
"Lecture Hall of the Century"
You Zheng "Sensor: The Key "Stuck Neck" Technology to be Overcome
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Video Transcript:
Hello everyone, it's a pleasure to talk to you all. The term sensor is probably a little too academic. I will first talk about the role of sensors in our lives, and the moderator just talked about what role these sensors will play in our lives.
The first one is what I just mentioned, the vehicle we often use, an ordinary car uses more than 100 sensors, from the combustion process of our engine to the process of driving our power, and to our safe driving and so on.
Everyone cares about our future smart cars, the so-called smart cars are that we want to have a driver to replace people to drive, and the replacement people actually need our sensors, such as our vision system, we want to identify the surrounding environment, we also have active lidar, can actively find the target, so that our car can make corresponding judgments.
At the same time, we also want our speed, our controls, to catch up with the rhythm of our traffic, to be able to pass smoothly without being limited by traffic lights. These require a lot of high-end sensors to support the operation of our cars, which are all needed for travel.
In fact, we are at home, and we actually put a lot of demands on our sensors. We also know that medical instruments, in fact, through the sensors in the middle of medical instruments, we can perceive some parameters of our human body, and judge through these parameters, what kind of disease you have, what medicine to prescribe, or what kind of surgery to do.
Traditionally, these sensors and instruments are relatively large, so if we get sick, we may need to drag our sick body to find these instruments, such as our X-ray, our B-ultrasound or MRI machines, so it is really very difficult.
Some foreign countries already have portable instruments, and many of our medical instruments and sensors have been miniaturized and integrated. So if you get sick, people can not move, and the instruments come to you one by one, so that a lot of pain for our patients is reduced.
Of course, this is also a stage, what is the next stage? In the next stage, we not only have to treat the disease, but also prevent the disease, so we use these wearable devices to combine a lot of sensors with your daily life belts, gloves and wrists. When there is an abnormality in your body, it can send signals from these sensors. There are doctors in hospitals who use this information to determine whether you are healthy, what kind of surgery you need, or what kind of medication you need. Of course, this is also a phase.
Ultimately, we wanted our sensors to be able to replace the functionality of the human part. For example, if your ears are deaf and you can't hear clearly, we can use hearing aid sensors to restore the function of your ears. If our eyes are not very good, we can use the image sensor to connect to your brain-computer port, which can replace the function of your eyes.
Of course, if your nose says that your sense of smell is not good, we can use the sensor of smell, of course, for example, we are a little sick, such as the common diabetes, mainly blood sugar. We can make a blood glucose sensor, which only falls under your skin, and when your blood sugar is high, we can automatically release a small amount of insulin into your body to improve your own blood sugar balance. Diabetes is not a terrible disease. These are called implantable sensors and therapeutic devices. I think that with the development of sensing technology, the quality of life of our people will be greatly improved.
Of course, you will also hear some traditional classic stories, such as our Shangganling Battle, our Wang Cheng hero, and the last talk of "fire at me", in fact, he used the radio to instruct us that these artillery fires can go to the position to destroy the enemy. Many of our guided weapons also require precision strikes. So far, I'm telling you that we can actually replace it with sensors, with our target indicators.
We can do the so-called smart dust, which is very small, a few milligrams, and the volume is also a few cubic millimeters, and we can usually scatter it, sprinkle it where we need to attack, and we wake it up when we are fighting.
These intelligent dusts can signal specific targets, and the sensors on our missiles can track our target indicators and perform precise surgical operations on them. So if it's Wang Cheng now, we just need to put a small sensor to solve it. Don't "shoot at me" and sacrifice ourselves in exchange for victory in our war.
What is even more shocking is that on the French National Day, which is often broadcast in our news, the famous skier piloted a flying machine, known as a trapeze, which can fly freely in the air.
Everyone also thinks that a thing can fly freely in the sky, so it is very difficult to control. What inputs does it control? It's actually our sensors. Such a thing can float in the sky, can drive according to human movements, and can automatically achieve some of its goals. I think these are the sensors that play a decisive role.
Of course, in the near future, we can also see what our sensors and our systems can do. The so-called "AI killer bee" is also a typical application of sensors.
Such a small killer bee can fly freely. When you go to capture it, it can evade your people's capture. Based on the pre-typed images, he can find the person being attacked, and finally stop at the door of your head and shoot you dead with 3 grams of explosives. So such a thing completely changed the shape of our future wars. There are no guns at all, and there is no need to aim. Just put your image in and it can put you to death.
Of course, this also raises some scientific and ethical questions. This is the latter question. But in terms of the technology of the sensor itself, it can fly freely, evade through artificial intelligence, and find the target it needs. These are important developments in the sensors that will underpin our future smart technologies.
We have reached the era of the Internet of Things, and we are going to enter the era of intelligence. I think sensors are the most basic foundation, such as the technology of the Internet of Things, in fact, there are three core technologies. The first technology is actually sensor technology, and the second technology is actually network technology. The third technology is the development of the application level.
Of course, we've probably been more focused on the network and some of our work at the application level so far. But the most basic sensor is actually often overlooked, and in fact it is also the most core and critical part.
So what is a sensor? In fact, up to now, we can define the so-called sensor using advanced technology, microelectronics, optoelectronics, and our materials. What information does these technologies complete, the acquisition and processing of information between us and physical events and the physical world, how to obtain the information we need, store it, and transmit it to the place where we need it, it should be a systematic thing. Sensors are also making continuous progress in the direction of informatization, miniaturization and intelligence.
Take a typical example – gyroscopes. What does a gyroscope do? It's actually a measure of our angular motion, and we want to know the exact position of the car when we drive off a moving object, for example, after a car goes out. Of course, we all know that GPS is used now, but GPS can also be occluded, or it can be interfered with.
The measurement of the position itself is actually measured by two things, a gyroscope and an accelerometer. The gyroscope measures the angle, the accelerometer measures the displacement, with the angle, with the displacement, we can measure the position of a moving object in real time.
But what does our traditional gyroscope look like? It weighs a few kilograms, and the price is very high, tens of thousands of dollars. Therefore, if you want to install several gyroscopes in a car, the weight will also come up, and the price will be close to 100,000, so it is impossible for him to be applied in the automotive industry.
But how big is the sensor now? It's just a few grams, the accuracy is the same, and the price has become hundreds or tens of dollars. Our cars can be equipped with our new sensors, and we can measure our location in real time, even if we are underground, in the garage, we can accurately locate the location. Unlike now, we can only locate in open places, where satellite signals are received. This is a typical example.
Therefore, we often talk about the progress of sensing technology, which is actually a disruptive technology, after the emergence of a new technology, for our traditional concept, as I just said, tens of thousands of dollars, a few kilograms of things, by tens of grams, hundreds of dollars of things are completely replaced at once.
The sensor market is actually a 100 billion market, with such a large market capacity, why not mention the sensor, just think of which company, or which company, will play a decisive role in our sensor industry.
In fact, this has something to do with the characteristics of our sensor industry. As I said earlier, sensors are used in all aspects of life, and there are actually thousands of sensors, even tens of thousands. If you subdivide tens of thousands of sensors, each sensor has its own characteristics, unlike a chip, as long as the line width or process is done, all chips can be made. If you can make this sensor, you may not be able to make another sensor, so the sensor manufacturers are very widely distributed.
It should be said that as I said myself, the sensor is a silent industry, everyone has to use the sensor, but everyone does not feel the sensor, it will be like a car, like an industry like an aircraft can have such a big shock, but it is indeed an indispensable industry.
As I said just now, our low-end sensors are the world's largest and most widely distributed industries in China through the introduction of our technology into joint ventures. But in terms of the core of high-end sensors, we still have a lot of gaps, such as our cameras in the mobile phones we use, and the final core image chip can not be completely domestic, and we still need to import, including today's cameras, these image sensors of our cameras still need to be imported, and we cannot fully produce. So that's going to be a bottleneck for our future development.
In fact, I think the development of sensors in our country and the gap between the world and the world are mainly in these aspects.
First, I think the low-end sensors are mainly based on the introduction of digestion and absorption, and the high-end sensors are mainly concentrated in universities and research institutes to do research. Therefore, we have not yet represented our country's sensor industry like some large and powerful companies and enterprises abroad.
Second, in terms of investment, it is also affected by the mentality of investors, everyone is willing to invest in some host or high-display industries, which is very important to us, but it is widely distributed, and the attention of the industry is not enough, so there is still relatively little investment.
Third, it is also related to our industrial base, and some gaps in integrated circuits and some process equipment have also hindered the development of our sensors.
Of course, the last one, I am also thinking, in terms of industry, we are actually not fully able to establish a channel of production, education and research. In particular, we are still in a preliminary stage in terms of high-end sensors, and there are not yet a large number of high-end sensors that can lead the development of the world.
Why did he get stuck in the neck? I would like to give you two examples. First, as you know, our country has a two-engine specialty, that is, aero engines and gas turbines, so aero engines and gas turbines work. In fact, it is in a very bad condition, about 1000 degrees Celsius, the pressure is working at a few atmospheres, and the impact is tens of thousands of g, so we have to measure the working condition of the inside of the sensing engine.
At present, the sensor cannot be done, and the general practice is to install a sensor on the outside of the engine, and estimate the working conditions inside through the external sensor.
But with the development of technology, the so-called smart blades have appeared in the United States, and sensors are embedded in the blades, which can measure temperature, pressure, and flow. With these accurate parameters, temperatures can be measured to more than 1,000 degrees, pressures can be measured to several atmospheres, and shocks can be measured to tens of thousands of g. The working conditions of all these engines and internal combustion engines can be accurately known, and we can adjust our working conditions to improve their efficiency.
According to the United States, the efficiency of its gas engine or engine can be increased by 5%-8% with accurate measurements. To take a simple example, burning the same coal can generate 5%-8% more electricity. That's the benefit of a typical sensor.
And the high-end sensor I just talked about on the smart blade is not yet available in China, including our research that has not yet reached the level, and I think this is also a very important bottleneck.
The second aspect is that the most important one in the smart car is called lidar, which scans the outside scene through lasers. Lidar currently mainly relies on imports, and the price is very expensive, basically around 100,000 yuan.
So according to the development of science and technology now, we can't say that we spend 100,000 yuan on the car to make my car smart, I don't think anyone will buy a car, if all the sensing performance of our kind remains the same, we can turn it into hundreds of dollars, thousands of dollars. I think everyone will spend a few thousand dollars in exchange for comfortable enjoyment, and everyone will definitely be willing. So it's also a very choking place for us.
So we can't imagine how good life will be in the future, but we can also think about how we can achieve a good life. I think this is also a problem that we often get stuck in our daily lives.
Of course, I would like to conclude with some of my personal suggestions. The sensors of the future are so important, the prospects are so good, and the market is so big, why haven't we been so unsatisfactory until now?
I think there are three main reasons. First, I think that if we pay attention to sensors, we must first dig into the source of them, and we must pay attention to the cultivation of human resources and the development of original technologies, and we really do not have enough in this regard. The development of science and technology in the countries before us is the same, and we are more concerned about how to narrow the gap with the world, and we have been in such a state of tracking.
The plan that includes our most typical 863 is also tracking high technology. I think that in this era, the development of sensors will change people's lives and subvert people's imagination, and innovative sensors must be needed, so we should pay more attention to innovative technologies and the role that innovative technologies can play. Therefore, I also think that I am also a university, and I also want to train a group of people in the curriculum system and knowledge institutions of our universities, which can meet the needs of the development of our sensor technology field.
Second, as I just said, sensors are very widely distributed, and it is impossible for a company to do all the things of sensors, so what should we do? I think there are two aspects of government intervention, the first is to build some public platforms, and the second is to provide some common services.
For example, as I just said, if we want to make sensors smaller and more advanced, we need a processing platform, and this platform still has a very large investment, maybe hundreds of millions. If every company has such a production line of hundreds of millions, I think its input-output ratio may not be very good. If we build a public platform at the government level, all of our sensor companies can use the public platform to do things. I think it is equivalent to you planting a plane tree, attracting a lot of golden phoenixes and creating the vitality of an industry.
Third, we also know that high-end sensors, its experiment and certification process is very long, and it is impossible for every company to create a test environment and some conditions for certification. Therefore, can the government provide some public conditions and certification means, so that our sensors can be under the same conditions as our foreign sensors, and the third-party certification can enter the market of our users, rather than we have reached the level of others who say that we have reached the level of others, and the government should also provide services and some support in these aspects.
Of course, I also think that the sensor just talked about how many tens of thousands of such a sensor, as a country, I think it must be around the national goal, demonstration application.
For example, our future smart cars, if it is an important direction for the development of our automobile industry, around the core sensors needed in smart cars, such as our lidar, our gyroscope, our accelerometer, these have worked for a long time, can make breakthroughs, and at the same time lead the development of the world on the basis of our market cultivation.
Of course, I am also talking about the sensor industry is very widely distributed, and we also hope that the national policy can promote the accumulation of the industry in a certain region, form the advantages of this region, form a good regional brand and product brand, and enter the world's mainstream industry to lead the development of our sensors. Thank you.
Audience question: After listening to your introduction, I feel that we are getting closer and closer to a society where everything is connected. But if there are so many sensors and cameras constantly collecting and analyzing so much data all the time, will it cause us to have some personal information that we may not want to share, such as our life, work and rest, our location, and even our health status, what is your solution to such a problem?
You Zheng:
This problem actually comes from two levels, the first is from the issue of scientific ethics and social governance, that is, we have obtained so much data in the information age, and the privacy and management of the data itself need to be protected by a legal system.
Second, I also want to talk more from the perspective of technology, in fact, there are technical solutions. For example, most of our current sensors are cameras, and the camera obtains too much information, in fact, sometimes you don't need to get the information.
For example, the control of our traffic, in fact, the control of traffic, we are nothing more than what kind of vehicle is driving on what track, interested in its speed, in fact, we don't need to be interested in human information, but a camera will see all the conditions in the car. If you store the information of the camera, it may involve people's privacy.
But if we have other sensors, like we have electronic signage, we have electronic these readers, we have sensors underground. When your car passes, your speed, and this information can be tracked, we don't need a camera. You don't need to use a general time-consuming and laborious method to obtain some unwanted personal information, but more concerned about the information you need.
I think this is also with the advancement of sensing technology, there will be some ways to improve our access to information to improve the confidentiality of private information.
In fact, in many countries, in all public places, everyone should abide by some principles of his information, but in some non-public occasions, in fact, personal information is very confidential. For example, if you are indoors, you can't install a camera, you can install an infrared sensor at most, and it will be okay if anyone enters the room. You can't say that if you record everyone's activities indoors through a camera, there may be some privacy issues. So I think there's a lot of work to be done from both a technical and a management perspective. Thank you.
Audience question: Hello Academician You, I just listened to your story, and learned that sensing technology is actually an interdisciplinary technology that integrates multiple disciplines, and I especially want to ask you how to cultivate such high-end compound talents, thank you.
You Zheng:
Well, the question I just asked is very in place, why the sensing technology is facing such great difficulties and developing so hard, I think it has something to do with the characteristics of the sensor.
For example, if we are engaged in machinery, it is enough for us to only understand machinery, and if we are engaged in microelectronics, maybe we understand semiconductors and circuits, and we are enough. However, there are many technical fields of sensor industry design, and we often talk about optical, electromechanical, material, optical, electronic, mechanical, computer, and one is material, which is a group of people to work together to make a goal we need. So I think there are a couple of challenges.
First, our talent training needs more interdisciplinary disciplines, rather than a single discipline's knowledge, otherwise it is difficult for you to balance one of these disciplines. For example, if we only understand mechanics, or only understand electronics, you may not be able to do this trade-off. I guess this is the first one.
The second. As we all know, there is still a relatively good standard for measuring the organizational work of a single discipline, and it is also very well organized. But like the sensor, the organization of different knowledgeable people together, in our traditional Chinese concept, is actually the work of its own team. And how to organize a team to work towards a goal is difficult in itself.
That's why I've been saying that our current education, in addition to the intersection of knowledge institutions, a greater integration, and a broader foundation, actually needs to cultivate the spirit of our talent team work. I think that's also indispensable. So a lot of them, we have a good single technology, but we don't have a foundation to work with people and teams, and in fact, in the end, things can't be done.
Therefore, I think the biggest problem facing our sensor is that the surface we involve is too wide, and the sensor is relatively long from the chain of our technology, so it is too wide and too long, and we can't achieve the expected effect after any link goes wrong. So this is also an important aspect of the sensor that is more difficult to do and more challenging.
Therefore, it is also a focus of our future talent training, how to adapt to the characteristics of our sensor industry and technology, to cultivate the talents needed for our sensors.
Question from the audience: I heard that some professors, scholars and researchers in the United States have the spirit of sitting on the cold bench and always adhere to the research direction they believe in, even if they may not be the mainstream research direction at that time, and even even if they do not have important commercial value, many original and breakthrough innovations are often produced in them. But some of our Chinese researchers seem to lack the spirit of sitting on the porch bench. What is your opinion on this phenomenon? Thank you.
You Zheng:
The question I just asked is very poignant, and I would like to answer it in two ways. The first is that American universities and Chinese universities actually live in different eras, or different statuses.
Because in the United States, American universities and research institutes are more engaged in basic and applied basic research, so they are not as involved and concerned as Chinese universities are actually pursuing scientific exploration, pursuing a personal interest or a scientific pursuit.
Therefore, he can do what I want, can do what he wants to do in his school or research institute for a long time with relative peace of mind, and can also do one thing for decades and do it to the extreme.
In fact, I am talking about our country's colleges and universities, which actually undertake three parts of the task, of course, the first task is to cultivate talents, and the second is to engage in some basic research like American universities, but a large part of the energy is still doing some technology development. The so-called development of technology is to be used by people and turned into a product.
So I also have a lot of American professors are also communicating, American professors said that we were in the same state as you 20 years ago, when our enterprises have not yet developed to a certain height, when enterprises have not yet had the ability to turn innovative ideas into products, he is not doing this in universities, so at that time he also seemed more impetuous, doing everything, wanting to do everything. It is best to start from the discovery of the principle and sell the product all the way to the end of the professor's own work.
However, with the progress of society, I think the division of labor is becoming more and more detailed, maybe people who focus on innovation will be more innovative, and people who focus on industrialization will focus more on product development, so that the market can do better.
I think the first problem is the different stages of the talks, which may lead to the difference in the social responsibility shared by our universities or enterprises, and I think this is one aspect.
Second, I'm also thinking that most of the funding for these studies in the United States actually comes from the government, such as the Nature Foundation or the NIH Agency for Health, which is a public interest and basic research. These studies are comparable to all of our colleagues, so everyone is doing these basic studies with peace of mind, so he is very able to do this with a good attitude.
But in our research institutes, there are those who are engaged in technical research, some are engaged in development, and some are engaged in products, so after being together with each other, I feel that its values and its evaluation standards drive it to seem that it is not able to do something with peace of mind.
Because you do technical research, for example, what you do is useless, why don't you turn it into a product, and the product person says why don't you write a high-level article to publish. So these evaluations just prompt us that everyone may have done everything and done it well, but it is not the most basic, original, and not able to directly serve our industry.
I think it is our country's scientific research, and I think there are still some problems that need to be solved more in terms of institutional mechanisms, so as to truly achieve the integration of industry, academia and application. I think we're looking forward to it.