The bi-annual survey of engineers, Mind of the Engineer, conducted by the EE Times and EDN, found sensors to be the technology most of the 1,500 polled were planning on or had recently adopted.

Engineers “when asked which new technologies you’ve already adopted and are interested in adopting over the next two years, sensors led by a big margin. Analog/linear and digital signal processing followed in the category of already adopted, and artificial intelligence took the lead for the technology most interested in adopting over the next two years,” Electronic Products noted.

The survey also asked the engineers how they spend their time at work, “in the Americas, the majority of engineers (43%) spend their time creating new products, while 28% focus on improving an existing product. Similarly, your counterparts in EMEA (47%) and China (42%) spend most of their time designing new products.

Interestingly, designers in China (15%) and the rest of Asia (12%) spend a significant amount of time reverse-engineering a competitor’s products. This is in comparison with 5% of engineers in the Americas and 6% in EMEA”.

The report also found that 18% of those polled said they outsource their design work. For what reasons did that happen? Top reason - limited local engineering resources (69%), quick-turn projects (35%) and complex projects (37%) were also mentioned. Software development, test certification and need for specific skill sets were areas outsourcing was used.

The survey also found that microprocessors/microcontrollers and IP cores were part of an engineer’s conceptual stage of product development with analog components and interconnect, passive, and electromechanical devices part of the detailed design stage.

A webinar discussing the survey will be held August 20 at 9 am PST and you can sign up for it here.