Devices equipped with this module can allow applications to fully reconstruct any event with high accuracy and so provide more features and enhanced user experiences. End markets are expected to include mobiles, wearables, and consumer medical products, as well as equipment for smart homes, smart industry, and smart driving.
The LSM6DSV320X sensor comes in a regular-sized module (3mm x 2.5mm) with embedded AI processing and continuous registration of movements and impacts. Leveraging ST’s experience with MEMS design, the dual-accelerometer device ensures high accuracy for activity tracking up to 16g and impact detection up to 320g.
The sensor extends the family of sensors that contain ST’s machine-learning core (MLC), the embedded AI processor that handles inference directly in the sensor to lower system power consumption and enhance application performance. It features two accelerometers, designed for coexistence and optimal performance using advanced techniques unique to ST.
One of these accelerometers has been optimised for best resolution in activity tracking, with maximum range of ±16g, while the other can measure up to ±320g to quantify severe shocks such as collisions or high-impact events.
By covering an extremely wide sensing range with accuracy throughout, all in one tiny device, this AI MEMS sensor will let consumer and IoT devices provide more features while retaining a wearable form factor.
An activity tracker can provide performance monitoring within normal ranges, as well as measuring high impacts for safety in contact sports, while other consumer-market opportunities include gaming controllers, enhancing the user’s experience by detecting rapid movements and impacts, as well as smart tags for attaching to items and recording movement, vibrations, and shocks to ensure their safety, security, and integrity.
With its wide acceleration measurement range, this sensor will also enable new generations of smart devices for sectors such as consumer healthcare and industrial safety. Potential applications include personal protection devices for workers in hazardous environments, assessing the severity of falls or impacts.
Other uses include equipment for accurately assessing the health of structures such as buildings and bridges.
The sensor’s high integration simplifies product design and manufacture, enabling advanced monitors to enter their target markets at competitive prices.
The 2.5mm x 3mm LSM6DSV320X integrates three micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) sensors, comprising the ±16g and ±320g accelerometers and a MEMS gyroscope with ±4000dps range. The sensors are fully synchronised, making the modules easy to use and helping to simplify application development.
In addition to the MLC, which handles energy-efficient context awareness, the LSM6DSV320X integrates a finite state machine (FSM) that helps perform motion tracking in the module. The digital circuitry also includes ST’s Sensor Fusion Low-Power (SFLP) technology for spatial orientation.
The LSM6DSV320X also features adaptive self-configuration (ASC) to optimise power consumption. Sensors with ASC can automatically adjust their settings in real-time upon detecting a specific motion pattern or signal from the MLC, without intervention from the host processor.
To facilitate tracking high-intensity impacts and at the same time maximize the accuracy on low-g events, ST has also created and patented the Motion XLF software library which fuses data from the low-g accelerometer and high-g accelerometer.
Customers’ engineering teams can use the software freely in their designs using the X-CUBE-MEMS1 package. ST also provides, free of charge, graphical design tools that help evaluate, configure, and test the LSM6DSV320X sensor and embedded AI and connect the projects with STM32 applications.
These include MEMS Studio, part of the ST Edge AI Suite, and ST AIoT Craft, the web-based environment with tools for developing and provisioning node-to-cloud AIoT (Artificial Intelligence of Things) projects. The LSM6DSV320X is supported in ST Edge AI Suite now and will be added to ST AIoT Craft by the end of 2025.
