Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
as information collectors, however, has been compromised in the last decades due
to limited development activities in sensor research compared to other electronic
areas. The recent revolutionary progress of smart sensors, wireless sensors, and
micro/nano-technologies, Meijer (2008), is in Huijsing (2008) regarded as the third
revolution named “sensorisation”, after the earlier technology revolutions “mech-
anisation” and “informatisation”. The focus will indeed increase the emerging
demands for powerful performance in intelligent systems, where the sensors are
considered to be a vital part. But it has to be emphasised that the sensors them-
selves need to be incorporated or even integrated in active systems that effectively
handle huge and extensive information in real time. A single sensor, even with
whatever smartness incorporated, will not meet the demands of performance with
dynamic and actively searching information abilities. However, by vastly inte-
grating a huge number of small, intelligent and specific sensor units that are also
cheap to manufacture, the performance will, of course, increase the range of useful
information. A carefully designed multi-sensor system will provide the end user
with more sophisticated and valued data, compared to traditional single or few
sensor(s) systems.
In the present trend, comprising the emerging developments in the field of
artificial human-based sensing, the main purpose is to achieve a performance in
the sensor system that corresponds to the efficient, naturally complex and valued
interaction between a sensor system and the human. Information has to reflect the
real world status in the close human proximity, and presented to humans at the
required time and in an acceptable quality. The information flow can, in this con-
text, be seen in a similar way as a modern manufacturing plant, where products
have to be delivered at a competitive cost, at the required time and in an acceptable
quality to the customer. An information system also has to deliver at a competi-
tive cost (flow), giving the cost for specific information that are used in the human
decision-making process. The information has to be presented and correlated with
the ordinary human's own perception obtained information in time, and before the
decision is made. This process result can be seen in the view of the consequence
that the sensor information really is an additional and weighted input to an effi-
cient decision-making or to provide further active information search. Finally the
desirable information would have such quality that the information will be accu-
rate and not provide misleading information to humans or autonomous systems.
4.2
FUNDAMENTALS OF SENSORS
A sensor system is considered to be a device that acts as an interface between
the physical world and a modelled world. As such, a sensor converts a physical,
chemical or biological phenomenon into an indicative property, i.e., a value
entering a transfer function between the real world and a corresponding artificial
system model. This “value” corresponds to a real world phenomenon and usually
measures the requested information in a time period or sequences and correlates
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