Cambridge Mechatronics’ stellar year kicks on with move to Cambridge Science Park

Cambridge Mechatronics’ recent move into Building 306 on Cambridge Science Park coincided with a phenomenal year for the company, which won Technology Company of the Year at the 2024 Cambridge Independent Science & Technology Awards.

Cambridge Mechatronics (CML) is the world-leader in the design and manufacture of shape memory alloy (SMA) shift actuators. Actuators are essential to high-precision mechanical operations – the ones Cambridge Mechatronics makes, comprising four or eight SMA wires, play an important role in providing stability and autofocus (AF) for smartphone cameras.

Using CML’s patented SMA technology, the four-wire actuator design enables both sensor shift and lens shift optical image stabilisation (OIS) capabilities. In its basic form, the actuator is a base plate, static plate, moving plate, and four 25um diameter SMA wires in a square configuration around the camera lens or image sensor.

In the four-wire actuator design, two of the SMA wires are responsible for controlling movement along the X-axis, the other two for the Y-axis, and all four wires work together to control the roll motion.

How? Well the SMA wires – made of nickel and titanium – contract when heated and expand when cooled, thus adjusting the sensor’s position. Fast and precise control is achieved through CML’s unique controller IC (integrated circuit) and software, which work together to deliver optimal OIS performance.

“We have access to the temperature inside smartphones,” says Dr Alexander Doust, director of marketing and global sales operations at CML.

“We apply current through the SMA wire and, at a certain temperature, the wire shrinks, and we control the length of wire by knowing the wire length through a wire resistance measurement. We adjust the wire length by controlling the wire temperature using current and measure the resistance of the wire so we know whether it needs to be lengthened or shortened.

“We control the position of the lens for autofocus – it’s all controlled through shape memory alloy wires. It’s something only we can do, others can’t control the SMA to the extent that we can. The key feature about this wire is that it packs a punch so we can move relatively heavy objects like a lens.”

The results have been phenomenal. Since being founded by Dr Tony Hooley, a fellow commoner of Clare Hall, in 1995, Cambridge Mechatronics’ technology has been shipped in more than 75 million units and has more than 750 patents pending and granted. In February it closed an oversubscribed funding round totalling $40m led by Atlantic Bridge – Intel Capital and Supernova acted as co-leads, with further participation from Sony Innovation Fund.

The core technology is in use in several of the world’s top-ranking smartphone cameras. Launches this month include two for the Chinese brand HONOR. On 13 June HONOR’s first clamshell vertical folding phone was unveiled. The Honor Magic V Flip combines high-end design, technology and SLR-level camera capabilities.

And last week, the HONOR 200 Pro became available in Europe for the first time, with a specific focus on achieving studio level portrait photography. The HONOR 200 Pro comes with a triple 50MP-camera configuration, with the 1/1.3” main camera supported by an eight-wire SMA AF+OIS single actuator, enhancing autofocus (AF) and OIS camera performance.

In selecting the SMA Lens Shift AF+OIS actuator in the main camera, HONOR acknowledges the advantage of having both AF and OIS in a single actuator. Using SMA enables fast focus and great quality images in low-light conditions.

Tony Ran, president of HONOR Europe, said: “With the HONOR 200 Series, we’re proud to bring the perfect fusion of artistry and technology to Europe, allowing anyone to take studio-level portraits every time.”

Sitting in a meeting room at Cambridge Mechatronics’ new premises, Dr Doust shares his delight at the new company HQ.

“The new office is two storeys with a total area of 24,000 sq ft,” he says. “About 20 per cent of that space is dedicated to workshop/testing/build activities – this is a significant upgrade on our previous premises.”

He adds: “Of the around 140 employees in our Cambridge HQ, all but a handful have a science and engineering background.

“We have a team of operations – comprising HR, Finance and IT – of 10 persons and a business development and marketing team of seven. Then we have a programme management office of seven persons and an IP team of five. Beside those teams, our workforce are engineering specialists. Note that the bulk of the sales team and the programme management also have a background involving science and engineering, myself included.”

The move to the Park has been officially deemed a success by co-managing director Andrew Bickley, who said: “Being on the Science Park gives us a stronger identity and profile and brings us closer to the heart of tech in Cambridge, with access to fantastic networking opportunities, for example at the Bradfield Centre.”

The company has now developed its own controller chips to operate the actuators in a change to its commercialisation strategy.

“If you break down the cost of the camera on a smartphone the image sensor tends to be the highest expense, then the lens, then the driver chip plus the actuator.

“At the moment our customers are buying third party chips, so we have to put all our control algorithms – the firmware – on to their chip. It’s essentially a series of codes that tell the actuator where to move and how fast.

“We have always received a royalty on every actuator sold by our licensees, and now we are targeting for the the customer to buy our chips. We want a bigger share of the pie as it were – it’s a challenge, it’s a very competitive market.”

There are other markets which Cambridge Mechatronics could pursue such as automotive, military, security, aerospace, but the company has chosen to eschew these at present due to “time to market, regulatory, political and ethical concerns”. But headsets are a viable market.

“There’s many cameras in VR/AR headsets, up to eight,” says Alexander. “They track the wearer’s eyes, they’re also viewing the world in front of the viewer. We’re involved in the focus – these headsets get warm, so focal compensation is needed. Also the power consumption needs to be minimal.”

Alexander adds: “The AR/VR technology is still in the development stage.

“The other market is in the medical field where we use our control technology, for instance in insulin patch pumps, which provide insulin into the body. With our actuators and precise control we can use a much higher concentration of insulin – the actuators provide control of the pump, which is not possible currently.

“The actuator would effectively be the pump, offering a much more lightweight and smaller patch solution. One option is to license the technology to a manufacturer, though in the medical field it’s very new so we haven’t decided. In the second half of the year we’d start some active collaborations.”

Cambridge Mechatronics operates offices in China – “the main role is to support sales and customer support operations – and in Copenhagen, where an R&D office takes advantage of local talents in algorithm development and firmware implementation.

“We have new staff here as well,” notes Alexander of the Science Park-based team. “We’re taking on around 10 people this year, and that will also help us develop this fabless silicon platform.”

Cambridge Mechatronics shipped 22.5m actuators last year. The mid-market for smartphones – handsets that cost around $500 – is where the growth lies.

With medtech and VR/AR headsets on the horizon – and especially with its own chip designs in the pipeline – it’s going to be fascinating to see how things pan out for Cambridge Science Park’s newest tenant.