The use of sensor's with machines, whether to control them continuously
or to inspect and verify their operation, can be highly cost-effective
in particular areas of industrial automation. Examples of such areas
include sensing systems to monitor tool condition, force and torque
sensing for robot assembly systems, vision-based automatic inspection,
and tracking sensor's for robot arc welding and seam sealing. Many think
these will be the basis of an important future industry. So far, design
of sensor systems to meet these needs has been (in the interest of
cheapness) rather ad hoc and carefully tailored to the application both
as to the transducer hardware and the associated processing software.
There are now, however, encouraging signs of commonality emerging
between different sensor application areas. For instance, many
commercial vision systems and some tactile systems just emerging from
research are able to use more or less standardized techniques for
two-dimensional image processing and shape representation.
Structured-light triangulation systems can be applied with relatively
minor hardware and software variations to measure three-dimensional
profiles of objects as diverse as individual soldered joints, body
pressings, and weldments. Sensors make it possible for machines to
recover 'sensibly' from errors, and standard software proce- dures such
as expert systems can now be applied to facilitate this.
