Start-up wants starring role in camera mechanics
Artificial Muscle hopes its electrically controlled elastic materials may remake the innards of your next camera.
- Shankland covered the tech industry for more than 25 years and was a science writer for five years before that. He has deep expertise in microprocessors, digital photography, computer hardware and software, internet standards, web technology, and more.
MONTEREY, Calif.--A start-up called Artificial Muscle hopes its actuator technology will provide a cheaper, quieter, and lower-power alternative to the host of motors and other devices that control mechanical movements inside cameras.
The company's technology employs a particular variety of resilient substances called elastomers. This variety changes properties when a voltage is applied across them, growing softer or firmer. Artificial Muscle mounts a ring of the material to a central disk that's pushed by a spring; when the material relaxes, the spring pushes the central disk outward.
The distance the disk travels, or "throw," is as much as 300 microns, or 0.3 millimeters, for an actuator package 9.5mm across, or 250 microns for the company's new 8.5mm package. (These sizes are standardized by SMIA, the Standard Mobile Imaging Architecture, so suppliers and manufacturers have more sales options.)
A 300-micron throw might not sound like much distance, but it's enough to run a variety of camera mechanics, said Charlie Duncheon, executive vice president of sales and marketing, in a presentation here at the 6sight digital imaging conference Thursday.
"We are going to be starting in the camera actuator market," he said. Among the tasks that could use the technology: autofocus, image stabilization, aperture control, mechanical shutters, and optical zoom.
The actuator can respond quickly enough for image stabilization, since hand shake happens with vibrations at between about 5Hz and 20Hz. However, throw distance decreases with faster actuator movement: the travel drops to 90 microns at 20Hz and 20 microns at 100Hz, he said in an interview.
Artificial Muscle was founded in 2003, spun out of research center SRI International in Menlo Park, Calif.