Background
Mike Horton was born October 23, 1973 in Austin, Texas, the second of two children of Claude Wendell Horton, Junior. and Elisabeth Alice Becker.
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Mike Horton
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Horton earned a Bachelor of Surgery and an Master of Surgery in electrical engineering from the University of California at Berkeley.
Career
Following his graduation, Horton co-founded Crossbow Technology in 1995 with his advisor A. Richard Newton. In 2003, Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Technology Review magazine named Mike Horton one of the top young innovators under 35. After exploring potential uses of silicon microelectromechanical systems sensor technology and experimenting with early acceleration sensors from the Berkeley Sensor and Actuator Sensor as well as commercial prototypes from Analog Devices, Horton and Newton decided to form a company to design and build products based on Microelectromechanical Systems sensor technology.
Crossbow Technology was founded in August, 1995.
The company"s initial vision was to leverage microelectromechanical systems based sensor technology for motion-based input devices which are now popular in video game systems such as the Nintendo Wii. The company refined the technology for application in commercial aerospace, and it became the first company to be approved by the Federal Aviation Administration as a TSO (Technical Standard Order) holder Federal Aviation Administration for a silicon microelectromechanical systems based attitude and heading reference systems
An AHRS provides a solid-state replacement of unreliable mechanical gyroscopes as primary flight instruments thereby increasing the safety of general aviation aircraft. The company"s Microelectromechanical Systems-based inertial systems are also used in automated guidance of farm tractors and unmanned aerial vehicle systems
Starting in 2001, Mike Horton worked with University of California Berkeley professor"s Kristofer South. J. Pister and David Culler to develop and produce commercially available hardware for the Smartdust and TinyOS research community.
These hardware platforms became known as "motes". The company produced several generations of "Motes" including the Mica2, Micaz, Insurance Regulatory Information System, iMote2, and TelosB. Applications range from crop monitoring to homeland security. Horton was the company’s Chief Executive Officer from its inception until it was sold to Moog Incorporated. in 2011.
The company’s systems were predominantly used in personal aircraft, construction and farming equipment, military weapons, and video game consoles.
He holds over ten patents. Horton’s first two issued patents, 5,615,132 and 5,819,206, describe a motion-based computing system, using accelerometers.
