HSINCHU, TAIWAN--(Marketwired - Apr 24, 2015) - Taiwan is once again being recognized for its innovative technology. The 2015 Edison Awards were announced on April 23 in New York, and Uneo Inc., a technology subsidiary of Universal Cement Corp. (UCCTW), won the Gold Award in Technology of Material Science for its Uneo™ Sensor, or Micro-Deformable Piezoresistive Sensor. This honor marks the first time a Taiwan's startup has been singled out in this category. Originally developed by the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI), this technology also won the Wall Street Journal 2010 Technology Innovation Awards. Moreover, Uneo is partnering with Dell, HP, Adobe, Lenovo, and Sharp on the commercialization of its technology, resulting in releases of an array of keyboards, touch stylus, and various consumer electronic products.
This year, Uneo was up against Electroninks Writeables, Inc. and QD Vision in the Technology of Material Science category, all of which were selected for their technological merits. The pick once again draws attention to the world-class technology standards of Taiwan.
Uneo Executive Vice President Johnson Hou stated that the firm is extremely honored to win an Edison Award this year. This constitutes recognition of the outstanding technology achievements and capabilities of the company's R&D team. Hou also thanked ITRI for its longstanding support. Started as an experimental project at ITRI in 2007, the research team joined UCCTW, the parent company of Uneo, Inc. in 2010 through a technology transfer agreement, allowing it to further develop state-of-the-art slim and flexible sensor technology to commercial scale.
The Uneo™ Sensor is to measure real time force change. It is extremely thin, light and flexible, and can be made into a variety of form factors ranging from a bed sheet matrix or ladybug sized single point sensor. It is also durable and can be placed on all types of flat and curved surfaces thus making it easy to be tailored to specific uses with different materials and circuit designs, and be able to detect different degrees of pressure, from 3 grams to 3,000 kilograms. The sensor is already applied in a broad range of consumer electronics products through collaborations with leaders in different fields. Uneo™ Sensor has already been successfully integrated into the products of consumer electronic giants such as Dell, HP, Adobe and Lenovo, and it will also soon expand into the field of IoT, big data and cloud computing by acting as a ubiquitous health data acquisition frontend, with applications in sports, medical device, automobile, and wearable devices.