ICICE01

Smart Sensors – Unit 1_1

SYLLABUS
 SENSING
• Collect information about the world
• Sensor - an electrical / mechanical / chemical
device that maps an environmental attribute
to a quantitative measurement
• Each sensor is based on a transduction
principle - conversion of energy from one
form to another
 TRANSDUCTION TO ELECTRONICS
• Thermistor: temperature-to-resistance
• Electrochemical: chemistry-to-voltage
• Photocurrent: light intensity-to-current
• Pyroelectric: thermal radiation-to-voltage
• Humidity: humidity-to-capacitance
• Length (LVDT: Linear variable differential
transformers) : position-to-inductance
• Microphone: sound pressure-to-<anything>
EXTENDED RANGES AND MODALITIES
• Vision outside the RGB spectrum
– Infrared Camera, see at night
• Active vision
– Radar and optical (laser) range measurement
• Hearing outside the 20 Hz – 20 kHz range
– Ultrasonic range measurement
• Chemical analysis beyond taste and smell
• Radiation: a, b, g-rays, neutrons, etc
 Electromagnetic Spectrum
Visible Spectrum

700 nm 400 nm
 BASICS OF SMART SENSORS

• The Sensors are devices that responds to a physical

stimulus heat, light, sound, pressure, magnetism,
motion, etc , and convert that into an electrical signal.
• They perform an input function.
• The Devices which perform an output function are
generally called Actuators and are used to control.
some external device, for example movement.
• Both sensors and actuators are collectively known as
Transducers. Transducers are devices used to convert
energy of one kind into energy of another kind.
SMART SENSOR
 SMART VS. CONVENTIONAL SENSORS _1

• These are not perfect.

• Their properties may change over time, this
phenomenon is called drift
• Poor adaptation to change in conditions, ie. no
intelligence
• Most sensors require some signal conditioning
circuitry
• Standard sensors usually need to be physically
close to the control and monitoring systems.
 SMART VS. CONVENTIONAL SENSORS _2

• Quantities that are recognized only by human

sensory systems and are not clearly defined
cannot be sensed by simple present sensors.
Eg. Odour and taste
• Sensing of multidimensional states is difficult.
SENSOR VS. SMART SENSOR
SMART / INTELLIGENT SENSOR