ramxeed-en1 Interview with Toby Best, General Manager of UBITO
For more than two decades, RAMXEED has supplied FeRAM technology to leading industrial innovators. Today, RAMXEED and UBITO work side-by-side as component partners supporting the future of battery-free motion sensing. Together, RAMXEED’s non-volatile FeRAM and UBITO’s Wiegand-based energy harvesting and sensing form the foundation of next-generation multiturn encoder systems used by manufacturers around the world.
In this conversation, we speak with Toby Best, General Manager of UBITO, about how this partnership helps encoder makers eliminate batteries, simplify design, and deliver long-life, maintenance-free performance. We also explore how POSITAL, one of UBITO’s key customers, has successfully integrated these technologies, and what innovations lie ahead as demand accelerates across robotics, automation, and mobility applications.
Interview
● Energy Harvesting rotary encoders
Q: What are the key demands of absolute multiturn encoders, and why are battery-free Wiegand-based systems an advantage?
Toby Best: Absolute multiturn encoders must preserve position information across power interruptions and operate reliably for years in demanding environments. Traditional solutions, batteries or mechanical gear trains, meet that need, but introduce maintenance, lifetime limits, and increased design complexity. Wiegand-based energy harvesting offers a modern alternative. Each rotation event generates enough energy to update the turn count without external power or moving mechanical parts, enabling a simpler, durable, maintenance-free architecture that aligns with the needs of advanced automation and robotics systems.
*This picture is the property of UBITO
Q: How does FeRAM support battery-free energy-harvesting encoder designs?
Toby Best: In a system powered by Wiegand sensors, each turn produces a small pulse of energy that must be sufficient to detect the event and store the updated count immediately. FeRAM is uniquely suited for this because it writes extremely fast and consumes very little energy. That allows each turn to be recorded in real time with no reliance on external power. Without this capability, a battery-free architecture simply would not be possible, FeRAM is the non-volatile memory technology that enables true energy-harvesting multiturn operation.
Q: What makes RAMXEED’s FeRAM particularly well-matched to this application?
Toby Best: RAMXEED’s FeRAM combines ultra-fast write performance, exceptionally low power consumption, and high endurance — exactly what a Wiegand-powered multiturn encoder requires. Its characteristics align perfectly with UBITO’s product portfolio: the Wiegand sensor generates energy, the UBITO counting ASIC processes each pulse, and RAMXEED’s FeRAM commits the updated count within the tight energy and timing constraints. This integrated approach removes the need for batteries or mechanical gear trains and delivers a clean, robust solution proven in industrial encoder platforms, including robotics and automation environments where long-term reliability is essential.
● A compact design to fit the market demand
Q: What trends and customer needs are shaping the rotary encoder market today?
Toby Best: Demand for absolute multiturn encoders continues to rise, driven by robotics, factory automation, and the shift to smarter motion systems across industries. Customers are increasingly prioritizing reliability, maintenance-free operation, and compact designs. These expectations put pressure on traditional battery-based and gear-based multiturn solutions, which struggle with lifetime limits, transport restrictions, and size constraints. In contrast, Wiegand-based architectures have now proven themselves in the market for nearly two decades, with POSITAL pioneering this approach long before today’s surge in adoption. As new sectors such as servo motors and mobile robotics scale, we are seeing a clear trend toward battery-free, solid-state multiturn encoders that support long operational lifetimes without maintenance or mechanical wear.
POSITAL – Battery-less Rotary encoder
Q: How are UBITO’s battery-free technologies performing in the market, and what feedback are you hearing from customers?
Toby Best: Market feedback has been very positive. Customers recognise the long-term reliability of Wiegand-based multiturn systems, and the success of POSITAL encoder platforms are a testament to this. The key advantages cited are maintenance-free operation, no batteries to replace or transport, and freedom from mechanical gear wear or size constraints. As machine designs become more compact and energy-efficient, a Wiegand-based approach resonates strongly. We are seeing growing demand in fast-scaling applications like servo-motors and mobile robotics, where engineers value robustness, longevity, and sustainability. These customers often tell us that moving away from batteries and mechanical components not only simplifies their design but, also reduces lifecycle complexity and total cost of ownership, which is becoming increasingly valuable in these high-volume applications.
● UBITO and its partners leading to a trending battery-less solution
Q: What innovation directions are shaping the future of Wiegand-based encoder technology?
Toby Best: Looking ahead, our focus is on further simplification, miniaturisation, and integration. Today, a multiturn encoder can be realised with just a few compact components — a Wiegand sensor, counting ASIC, and FeRAM. As encoder volumes increase, particularly in servo drives and robotics, footprint and cost become critical. We also see future opportunities for deeper integration at the IC level, reducing component count and enabling even smaller form-factors. Just as importantly, these steps make implementation easier for our customers, lowering design complexity and streamlining adoption in both high-volume and space-constrained applications such as collaborative robots and linear actuators. The goal is to continue removing mechanical complexity and batteries from motion systems while delivering a clean, reliable solution that scales efficiently across industries.
Q:How do UBITO and RAMXEED collaborate today, and where do you see joint development opportunities?
Toby Best: Our collaboration already enables the proven solid-state multiturn architecture used in industrial and robotics applications worldwide. UBITO’s Wiegand sensor and counting ASIC work seamlessly with RAMXEED’s FeRAM to deliver reliable battery-free operation. As demand grows, we see room for even tighter integration; including smaller package sizes, optimised interfaces, and potentially combining functionality to streamline implementation for encoder manufacturers. The shared objective is to give customers a compact, cost-efficient, and easy-to-integrate platform as volumes scale into the millions across automation, robotics, and mobility markets.
Q: How does this partnership support sustainability and emerging energy-harvesting applications ?
Toby Best: The shift away from batteries is not only a performance choice, it’s an environmental necessity. Millions of industrial and IoT devices rely on batteries today, and their cumulative impact on waste streams and logistics cannot be ignored. Event-based energy harvesting, where power is generated only at the moment it is needed, offers a cleaner and more scalable path forward. In motion systems, Wiegand energy harvesting eliminates batteries entirely, while RAMXEED’s ultra-low-power FeRAM ensures critical data is stored without constant energy supply. Together, these technologies demonstrate a viable route toward long-life, maintenance-free devices that significantly reduce battery dependency. A direction we believe will be increasingly important across both IIoT and robotics ecosystems.
About UBITO
UBITO is a technology brand under the FRABA Group, based in Germany. It specializes in Wiegand technology, offering advanced solutions for magnetic sensing, energy harvesting, and wireless transmission. Thanks to decades of expertise and a strong engineering foundation, UBITO is driving the evolution of self-powered sensing technologies into new industrial and automation markets.
About RAMXEED
RAMXEED (former Fujitsu Semiconductor Memory Solution), specializes in innovative memory solutions, including FeRAM and ReRAM technologies. With over 25 years of accumulated sales of 4.6 billion FeRAM units and a focus on high-performance, energy-efficient non-volatile memory products, we aim to continue driving memory innovation for a variety of industries and applications.