Embedded Sensors -
Small dimensions, big differences

• Change is occurring faster than ever before
• Caused primarily by technology advances
• The technology treadmill

Process automation & controls

• We moved during the last 50 years
  • From pneumatic controls (some still around)
  • To electronics (vacuum tubes) to transistors to integrated circuits
  • Direct Digital Controls (DDC) gave way to Distributed Control Systems (DCS)
  • Now we have networked PC-based control systems

Discrete Automation

• Contactors relays and motor controls became programmable logic controllers offering better alternatives for control
• PLCs are now a commodity business
• Software
  • Hard-wired relay-ladder-logic became programmable
  • Programmable via PC software
  • Embedded software

New age connectivity

• Every digital and analog I/O point is getting "connected"
• Eliminating the old "islands of automation"
• Introducing visions of vast arrays of interconnected "appliances"

Smart "appliances"

• Information needed from each product
  • History, part number, where purchased, when installed, by who, key characteristics, specifications, operating instructions, diagnostics, availability of spares, replacement alternatives, repair instructions, etc.
• In the past, this information would be in printed documentation, or with trained experts
• In the future, the I/O appliance itself will contain all of the required "knowledge", embedded within it and always accessible

Technology Moves on

• Today large, expensive and dumb
  • Sensors lack intelligence - they simply provide measurements for remote processing
• Tomorrow tiny, cheap and smart
  • MEMS and Nanotechnology will yield tiny, low cost, low power sensors
  • Tiny is important – scattered around to measure just about everything that you can imagine
  • Low power – won't need to carry a large battery
  • Low-cost – numbers required will be enormous

Automation inflection points

• Wireless sensors everywhere
• MEMS - Microelectromechanical systems
• NEMS - Nano Electromechanical systems
• Complex adaptive system (CAS)

Wireless sensors everywhere

• Wireless sensor networks will soon become as important as the Internet
• Just as the Internet allows access to digital information anywhere, sensor networks will provide vast arrays of real-time, remote interaction with the physical world
• The process monitoring and controls business will be generating significant growth in this new arena

Smart wireless networks

• Will soon be everywhere around us
• Collecting and processing vast amounts data – not just monitoring a few isolated sensors, but literally tens of thousands of intelligent sensor nodes
• Providing not merely local measurements, but overall patterns of change

Microelectromechanical systems (MEMS)

• Semiconductor fabrication techniques
• Miniature turbines, motors, gears, moving mirrors
• Sensors, actuators, and displays
• Size and cost bring practical utilization
• Tremendous number of old and new applications

Nanotechnology

• Small dimensions, big differences
  • At nanometer dimensions, the classical laws of physics change
  • New materials - smaller, stronger, tougher, lighter, resilient
• Practical nanotech materials
  • Different characteristics when "assembled" at a molecular level
  • Carbon nanotubes - strongest and most conductive fibers
  • Nano-structured membranes for efficient filtering of pollutants
• New gadgets galore
  Today's supercomputer – tomorrow's wristwatch or PDA
  • Tiny, inexpensive nanosensors - wireless networks, medical diagnostics, chemical and biohazard detection
• Carbon nanotube transistors
  • Smaller than any possible silicon transistor, better performance
  • New ways of storing information

NEMS - Nano Electro Mechanical Systems

• Nanotechnology - products at atomic-scale
  • Next step beyond MEMS
• Old-style metal bending, grinding and cutting will become obsolete
• Build-to-order
  • Materials with flawless internal structures
  • Stronger and lighter, less wear
• Electronics will get smaller and faster
  • Atomic-scale quantum effects - computing performance beyond today's wildest dreams

Complex adaptive systems

• New self-organizing, peer-to-peer networks
  • Intelligence resides directly in sensors and actuators
  • Eliminating large, complex, and ineffective centralized control systems
  • Today's PLC and PC-based controls & software will seem ineffective, expensive, and even archaic
  • CAS provides a level of effectiveness and robustness that is unprecedented
  • Old deterministic control architectures will disappear

New functions & applications

• Within the next few years, significant new technology will provide completely new functions
  Provide vast productivity and quality improvements in process systems

Related Links

• The Pervasive Internet & its effect on industrial automation

• Wireless Sensor Networks

• Network Choices - the Wireless Revolution

• Pervasive Networks

• Near-term Nanotechnology