SAN ANTONIO—Freescale Semiconductor Inc.'s 2012 Freescale Technology Forum featured, among other things, the first extended comments from the company's new CEO, Gregg Lowe, dozens of technology tutorials and a sneak peek at the company's strategy across all of the various markets that it serves. But the highlight of the event was arguably the Tech Lab, which showcased Freescale's technology in use in real world applications.
This year's Tech Lab featured over 200 exhibits, including concept cars, smart connected devices, kinetic energy harvesters, skateboards with embedded LEDs and even a blimp. (The Tech Lab also housed the Make It Challenge, a contest in which engineers used their 32-bit design skills using a Freescale intelligent car design kit and the processor of their choice to build and race an autonomous car and compete for the best time. Catalina de la Cuesta, an engineer from Medellin, Colombia, not only won a motor sports prize package for achieving the best time, but also took home $3,000 for winning the "Make it Smarter" portion of the competition, which challenged participants to get creative with Freescale sensors and connectivity tools to impress the judges).
The following pages contain just a few snapshots from the hundreds of cool products featured in the FTF Tech Lab.
This blimp, featuring Freescale's Xtrinsic sensors, took flight inside the exhibition hall that housed the FTF 2012 Tech Lab (click on image to enlarge).