In the future, mobile smart terminals can only provide end users with a richer, more detailed, and more realistic and immersive multi-dimensional interactive experience if they fully integrate the senses of hearing, vision, and touch. Thor Innovation is pushing this technological path to become a reality.

Thor Electronics focuses on haptic feedback and Screen sound technology research and development and industrialization, committed to becoming the world’s first company that can provide cross-industry customers with hardware design, software algorithms and SDK/API programs Open source and other complete service product solution providers.

Recently, Suowei Electronics announced the completion of tens of millions of angel round financing, which was jointly invested by Fengwu Capital, a well-known investment institution in the industry, Suzhou Industrial Park Leading Venture Capital, and Chasing Venture Capital.

As an investor in Suo's electronic angel round, Li Kan, managing partner of Fengwu Capital, was impressed by the executive power of founder Cao Hongbin:

The team led by President Cao has excellent project execution ability. During the epidemic, it took 2 months to complete the office and factory location, 3 months to complete the structure and team establishment of Suzhou and Singapore, and 4 months to win the Suzhou Industrial Park Technology Leading talent, completed 2 rounds of financing in 5 months, and the team led by President Cao made all investors feel the correct posture and precise stepping points.

Suo's core team is mainly from Apple. The team was responsible for the delivery of Apple's haptic products from prototype to mass production. It is one of the few professional teams in China with actual mass production delivery experience. We are optimistic about Soner Electronics' understanding of the industry environment and future layout of haptic technology. We believe that technological innovation determines the early value of the project, and the mass production and delivery of products determines the final upper limit of the project.

Technology breakthrough is imminent

As immersive virtual scenes are becoming more and more popular, traditional listening and visual technologies can no longer meet the user's demand for multi-dimensional human-computer interaction on smartphones, game content and more intelligent hardware, including tactile feedback. The multi-dimensional human-computer interaction technology in China is in urgent need of breakthrough.

Since tactile feedback products were adapted to Apple in 2014, through the polishing and optimization of previous generations of products, the interaction between smart phones, wearable watches and people has been greatly changed, and the user experience has been extended from traditional listening and visual to the third The dimension-tactile, also allows other competing companies to deeply feel the value of this technology.

However, due to the closed loop of Apple's industrial chain, other companies can only look at the “touch” and sigh, but they cannot get a complete optimal solution. Most of the existing players in the industry either only do hardware foundry, or only do drivers, or only do SDK/API program development, lacking the ability to provide a full set of solutions, thus forming a situation of discrete core technology.

Under such an industrial background, the "coming out" of service providers who can provide complete solutions is the key to completing industry technology integration and breakthroughs. However, combining discrete technology chains to achieve innovation and breakthroughs poses a huge challenge for companies with insufficient technology accumulation.

The mission of Suoer Electronics is to become the world's first service provider that can provide complete solutions from hardware design, software algorithm, application open source, to the final product trial production, mass production, and delivery, and to extend this technology to In the fields of automotive, medical, smart home, etc.

Broadband motor: fill the gap in the industry

At present, most of the tactile feedback functions on mobile phones and smart wearable devices on the market rely on single-frequency linear motors to achieve technical bottlenecks caused by inherent structural design.

First of all, the response bandwidth of a single-frequency linear motor is extremely limited (usually +/-10HZ), and once the applied digital content exceeds the natural frequency range, the output vibration cannot be equivalent. Since most of the existing haptic feedback technologies on the market use single-frequency linear motors, their extremely narrow response bandwidth severely limits the wide application of haptic feedback.

Immersive games and VR devices have been sought after in recent years. These fields have extremely high requirements for the cross-frequency response of haptic feedback. However, relying only on traditional single-frequency linear motors cannot meet user experience requirements well. In these new scenarios, broadband tactile feedback technology is still blank.

In contrast, Soner Electronics' innovative broadband motor technology has obvious advantages.

In the same volume, the broadband motor can achieve 1.4 ~ 2.5Grms (effective vibration volume), the traditional single frequency linear motor can only achieve the highest 1.2Grms (European and American device performance), while the domestic mainstream mobile phone customers use linear motor vibration volume The average value is only around 0.9 Grms.

In terms of response bandwidth, broadband vibration motor can be effective from 60Hz to 1000Hz Vibration output, while the frequency bandwidth of a single-frequency motor is only +/-10Hz, the vibration is attenuated sharply in the frequency band deviating from the inherent F0, which cannot form an effective tactile perception for the human hand.

In general, human hands are only sensitive to vibrations above 0.5Grms. This means that the vibration of Suoer Electronic Broadband Motor can be sensed by the human hand in a wider frequency range. Therefore, it can achieve more and more demanding tactile feedback effects.

(Image source: Suo Er Electronics)

Finally, under the same stimulus, the current response time of the best motor products in Europe, America and China is 40-60 milliseconds, while Suo'er's products can directly achieve within 10 milliseconds, achieving an order of magnitude improvement.

For the choice of product path, Suoerxian focuses on the game market, accumulates product technology, optimizes size and performance, and simultaneously develops small-size, high-vibration broadband vibration motors to meet the needs of mobile phone users. Its broadband vibration motor products are expected to begin mass production in the fourth quarter of 2020.

In the future, Suoer Electronics also plans to apply this innovative tactile feedback technology to automotive, medical, smart home and other fields to achieve greater vibration in product performance.

The smallest earpiece: 2.7 times smaller

The mobile phone is an important terminal product for people to complete the human-computer interaction of hearing, vision and touch. In addition to tactile feedback technology, traditional acoustics are facing major challenges in the structural design of mobile phones.

First of all, after the popularization of 5G mobile phones, full-screen technology will become the general trend. The full screen hopes to avoid opening holes on the screen or side of the mobile phone, thereby reducing screen manufacturing costs and improving ID design.

At the same time, for the sound device, according to the existing audio device design, the sound direction is not directly facing the human ear, but from the side or bottom. Therefore, the signal received by the human ear is the diffracted part of the sound signal. Was discounted.

The split screen sound product has passed the first test in the 2019 market and successfully replaced the traditional earpiece, but still has not realized the ideal earpiece + speaker dual mode.

Suoer's electronic screen sound mode realizes the "two in one" of earpiece + speaker for the first time.

It avoids screen openings, helps reduce the process difficulty of screen processing, and saves manufacturing costs; at the same time, it achieves a higher screen ratio and completely solves the technical problems of dustproof, waterproof, and splashproof mobile phones.

Through a split design, the sound generation technology of the electronic screen is driven by a magnetic circuit to vibrate the screen. Its sound direction transmits signals directly to the human ear, which is more efficient and has a better experience, which is conducive to achieving a uniform dual-field stereo effect.

In addition, Suoer Electronics has one of the most innovative changes in this field-it has developed the smallest handset in the global industry chain. The earpiece size of Suoer Electronics can be only 28.6 square millimeters (φ6mm), which is 2.7 times smaller than the minimum size of traditional earpieces. In this way, it can save most of the system space and further optimize the stacking method of the system.

In the product path, due to mature application scenarios and large demand, the primary application target of screen sound technology is on mobile phones. In the future, this technology also has the potential to be applied in multiple scenarios such as TV, smart home, smart medical, and automotive.

The rapid development of smart phones and mobile smart hardware has made people's demand for multi-dimensional human-computer interaction experience with hearing, vision, and tactile interoperability continue to rise. Suoer Electronics has achieved great breakthroughs in tactile feedback and screen sound technology and applications. Its broadband vibration motor technology has filled the gap in the global industry and has applied for self-developed patent protection.

As the product technology matures, this multi-dimensional human-computer interaction innovation led by Suoer Electronics is expected to become a new trend in the market, creating a more differentiated competitive advantage for end customers.

Founder Outlook

In his 16-year career, Mr. Cao Hongbin, the founder of Suoer Electronics, has experienced fierce competition from OEM and ODM, as well as the ups and downs of major European and American brands. The hard work made in China is still vivid. He is always worried about business negotiations without core competitiveness and subject to others, hoping to bring changes to history.

As the founder of Suoer Electronics, Mr. Hongbin Cao believes that many major decisions and breakthroughs in many events are the point where various subjective and objective factors have developed to the point of qualitative change. Only by choosing a path that few people take can the transformation be achieved. The founding of Suoer is an opportunity of history and a demand of the times. It is also a mission and necessity for a person with dreams, a mission, and passion and a group of people to fight for it together.

Those who do not seek the overall situation are not enough to seek a domain. Founding Suo Er, Mr. Cao Hongbin focused on the industry environment. Although tactile interaction is a subdivision, it has high technology density and few players. It is the only way to realize multi-sensory human-computer interaction. It can fully replicate traditional sound and visual In the historical development curve, one domain must be achieved, and the overall situation must be won. The blue ocean is there.

Those who don't plan for the whole world don't plan for a while. Founding Suo Er, Mr. Cao Hongbin analyzed the international situation. Sino-US frictions continue to escalate. The situation is difficult to change, but business is business. European and American innovations are floating in the sky. The Chinese market is busy landing. The bridge in between needs someone to do it. The courage to undertake this historical mission, to penetrate the West and China, iteratively innovate, and provide the best products and technical services for all types of mobile smart customers will be a manifestation of its value. A momentary choice will never fail.

Now and in the future, what Suoer does will profoundly prove that Chinese companies can conduct independent research, make breakthroughs in innovation, forge ahead, and open up cooperation.