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Friday, Mar 29, 2024

Interlink Adds Machine Sensors to Human Touch

Interlink Electronics Inc. has for decades supplied sensors to a variety of industries to enable human-machine interface. Now it is taking a new direction as it provides components for the Internet of Things, or machines talking with machines. Chief Executive Steven Bronson called the move an extension of the company’s history. “First and foremost, it is leveraging our own in-house capabilities,” Bronson said in an interview with the Business Journal from Interlink’s offices in Camarillo. “Over the past few years, we have built out our software capabilities and are tying that together with our knowledge of not just the sensors that we have developed internally but external sensor technology.” Founded in 1985, Interlink has taken its force-sensing technology and incorporated it within products, such as computer mouse touchpads and rugged keyboards and notebooks made by medical device, automotive and industrial market customers. In 2007, to better focus on its sensors and specialty components, Interlink sold its remote and branded products business segments for $11 million. The Internet of Things, or IoT, is a tech industry phrase for the connecting of devices with sensors and software for the collection and exchange of data. Smartphones and tablets are part of the IoT but so are light switches, streetlamps, water heaters, heart monitors, manufacturing and industrial equipment, and toll collection systems. One example of how Interlink supplies the IoT is a demonstration project it did of putting a smart cell with a chip into a gym shoe. Using software developed by the company, the cell was tied into an avatar that appeared on a tablet device. Everything the person wearing the shoe did was mimicked by the avatar, said Bronson. “We gave real-time force pressure mapping of the person’s sole,” he added. “So, if they were putting more pressure on the front of the foot or on the rear of the foot, it was showing that on a real-time basis. We worked with the chip, the software and the various sensor technologies to show and demonstrate our capability in the IoT.” LoRa Alliance To help the company further its aims in the IoT, it recently joined the LoRa Alliance, a nonprofit with more than 500 company members that help to advance long-range, low-power wide area network, or LoRaWAN, standards. Donna Moore, the chief executive of the alliance, said that companies joining the organization now have a great path ahead of them because the market is there. “It is just an incredible time,” she said. “For Interlink or any other company that is joining now and has the ability to make the sensors or do the integration or do the application layers, it is a great time.” Bronson said that joining the Alliance is a tremendous opportunity to take its value proposition to an ecosystem with a lot of major players. Joining in the past six months have been Amazon.com Inc., chip manufacturer Intel Corp., and Dish Network Corp. Semtech Corp., also in Camarillo, is a founding member of the Alliance. “We feel we are in a good position when there are sensors involved,” Bronson said. “We are not going to be involved with IoT unless there is a sensing element or multiple sensors.” While developing the sensors and the associated software and hardware internally will help with Interlink’s growth, Bronson said he knows it will take more than that. “There is a more aggressive push … to find pieces of the puzzle that are synergistic to Interlink’s platform and corporate strategy to pursue acquisitions,” he added. To that end the company is looking to rejoin a major public company market sometime next year. Interlink currently trades on the over-the-counter market but until January had been on the Nasdaq for nearly three years. It left the Nasdaq as a way to save on compliance costs. The company is not just looking at a major exchange in the U.S. It will consider a foreign one as well, given its global footprint that includes an R&D center in Singapore, a manufacturing presence in China, a distribution center in Hong Kong and a sales office in Japan. “We also think there are opportunities, whether they are acquisitions or strategic partnerships, with non-U.S. companies,” Bronson said. “In light of that, we feel we have to take a more holistic approach on where it makes the most sense to pursue a listing.”

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