Smart sensors

The purpose of developing smart (analog and digital) sensors for networked machine/process monitoring, and other tasks, is to make them as easy and trouble free to deploy, program and maintain, as plugging a keyboard, or mouse into a computer. The IEEE 1451 smart transducer interface standards describe a set of open, common, and network‐independent communication interfaces for smart transducers. (“Smartness” here means on‐board data storage/processing capability, interfaced/ integrated with the analog and/or digital sensor.) Several companies and individuals involved in networked control systems of machines, and the measurement and control industries are developing these new standards, in the USA sponsored by the IEEE Instrumentation and Measurement Society’s Technical Committee on Sensor Technology (TC‐9), and the US Department of Commerce NIST Manufacturing Engineering Laboratory.