Opportunities for sensors are flourishing. This is going to continue as new possibilities emerge in areas ranging from healthcare and automotive to the Internet of Things, where potentially billions of sensors may be required.
 
All of this is good news for BeBop Sensors, whose fabric-based sensors are already appearing in products worldwide. Sri Peruvemba, VP of strategy for BeBop Sensors, said that BeBop has already shipped more than two million sensors in the music field, where its founder, Keith McMillan, has employed their systems into the BopPad electronic drum pad and other instruments. The company also supplies its sensors to Fortune 500 companies in a wide range of fields.
 
“In the music field, we have shipped over two million units – Keith McMillan Instruments (KMI), our sister company, buys from BeBop Sensors for its Bop Pad electronic drums,” Peruvemba noted.
 
BeBop Sensors recently completed a more than $10 million financing round, which will be used for product development and gaining market share.
 
“BeBop Sensors is an unusual startup, in that we are actually supplying products and raised just enough money and generating millions of dollars in revenue,” said Peruvemba.  “We have revenue and are shipping. Our business is growing substantially every year.”
 
Peruvemba said that the ability to produce fabric-based sensors offers benefits to end-users.
 
“We are coating nanomaterials on a fabric that detects force, and our fabric sensor can also detect twist, bend and stretch,” he noted. “It’s a perfect fit, particularly for wearable technologies, as you can’t elegantly put a rigid device on the human body.”
 
Peruvemba reported that BeBop Sensors is gaining traction in healthcare, VR and automotive applications.
 
“For healthcare, our customers put these sensors in the insoles of shoes, and recently have been placing them in hospital beds and wheelchairs to determine where the pressure points are,” he said. “We are shipping into automotive applications, such as for car seats to determine contour and pressure points, and also in steering wheels. These could also be important in autonomous cars going forward.
 
“These sensors are also being deployed in gloves,” Peruvemba added. “Originally made for virtual reality (VR), the actual application that has great traction is the ability to know how much workers use their hands in the manufacturing process to measure stress.”
 
Sports are another area of interest.
 
“In the sports field, we have some applications with helmets and other gear,” said Peruvemba. “People want to know where players are absorbing the hit in football, for example. We just started shipping prototypes to a couple of customers. I can also imagine sports garments with sensors placed in strategic areas.”
 
The ultimate segment is the Internet of Things (IoT), and Peruvemba believes that BeBop Sensors has unlimited potential in that market.
 
“The volumes of sensors are absolutely enormous – even for industrial applications, we are talking about hundreds of thousands of sensors, and for the IoT, we are talking about billions of units,” Peruvemba concluded. “For IoT, you need low-cost sensors at these volumes. With our fabric sensors, there is no Z dimension and it can be cut into any shape, and it is very price competitive.”