OBC | Omnipresent sensor systems - the pros and cons of monitoring almost every aspect of our world – environment, processes, humans

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JOANNEUM

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Omnipresent sensor systems –

the pros and cons of monitoring almost

every aspect of our world – environment,

processes, humans

Volker Ribitsch

Physical Chemistry

University Graz, Institute of Chemistry

Joanneum Research Graz, Institute Materials, Sensor Systems

Out of the Box conference, Maribor 2012

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Omnipresent sensor systems

• Many innovative aspects to improve the quality of

living

- Health, environment, technology

• Also aspects reducing the quality and culture of

living

- Sociological aspects

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Overview

• Sensors – their technology

• Technical vs. biological

sensors

• Sensor applications

– Industry

– Environment

– Health care

• Positive aspects

• Questionable aspects

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What is a sensor ?

• SENSORS are devices transforming non-electrical signals –

biological, chemical, physical - into electrical signals.

Myriad of them in everyday devices surrounds us in our daily live.

• Sensors are little devices embedded in a wide range of products

and often overlooked in our IT centered world.

• They provide manufacturer, sales organisation, consumer,

environment control organs, health care organisations with a

permanent flow of data.

• They provide due to wireless intelligence and capabilities

on one side safety, flexibility, mobility and ease of use

on the other side information about our whereabouts, health and

fitness conditions to organizations, persons we do not know.

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Sensor applications

• Industrial process / products control and management

• Energy management and efficiency

• Automotive technology

• Consumer device control

• Control of public places

• Home and commercial building control and automation

• Food production - quality (and pathogens) control

• Health care

• Many more

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What do they sense?

Physical Chemical Biological

Temperature pH (acidic, basic) Heart beat

Pressure Conductivity Blood pressure

Length Concentration ?? Glucose

Distance Redox potential Oxygenation

Revolution

Sound Antibodies

Time span Proteins

Optical signals DNA

Colour

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Transducer

Non electrical /

electrical signal

Input

signal

Sensors – basic principles

Electrical

Processing

A / D

Converter

Amplification

Transfer a chemical, physical, biological

signal into an electrical signal:

Output

signal

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Working principle

Input Transformation Signal processing

Transducer

Technical sensors

non electrical signal electrical signals microprocessor

physical, chemical resistance, voltage storage

current

Biological sensors

biological compounds signal molecules nerve cells

nerve cells brain

electrical signals

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Technical sensors

Magnetic field temperature light

Size: 0.5 – 2 mm diameter

Typical industrial sensor systems

Development trend: electrical replaced by optical sensors

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In-line sensor for process systems´and

vessels

O2, CO2, pH, …

Optochemical Sensors for Industrial Process Control

Present Implementation:

Oxygen process sensor for

the beverage industry (

breweries)

(~2003)

(~2010)

(~2008)

Particular Challenge:

Must withstand CiP („Cleaning in

Place“)

•NaOH

•HCl

•HNO3

•HOOAc

•H3PO4

•HClO

•Temperatures >90dC

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RFID Radio Frequency

Identification

• Passive sensor

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Biological sensors

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Biosensors

Biosensors combine the excellent selectivity of biology with the

processing power of modern microelectronics and optoelectronics.

They offer powerful new analytical tools with major applications in medicine,

environmental diagnostics and the food and processing industries.

Biosensors consist of bio-recognition systems, typically enzymes or binding

proteins (antibodies), nucleic acids immobilised onto the surface of physico-

chemical transducers.

Specific interactions between the target analyte and the complementary bio-

recognition layer produces physico-chemical changes which are measured

by the transducer.

Lab on a Chip

several hundred processes on one micro-chip

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Biosensors

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Biological sensor vs. technical sensor

systems

Technical Biological systems systems

Digital camera Temperature Eye

sensor system

Resolution: 10 million pixels 1 out of 1000 7 million cones

(maximum 80*106) 120 million rods

Signal transfer: digital digital digital

Transfer: 16 bit 16 bit 106 fibres

Transfer rate 460 kHz 500 pulses /

neuron / sec

1,4 GBit/sec 15 MBit /sec 500 MBit / sec

Pre-processing no no yes

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Sensor market

Annual growth:

Active sensor systems: Technological sensor systems: > 10%

Biosensor sensor systems: > 20%

Passive sensor systems: (Radio Frequency Identification RFID tags): > 50%

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Application

Food industry: Control of beer production

• Oxygen in beverage - deteriorates the taste of beer!!

• Chemical parameter: pH, conductivity

• Hygienic aspects – O2 in closed food packages

Environmental control:

• Parameter monitored continuously: – Dissolved oxygen, ionic strength, (pH)

• Demand: Heavy metals, hazardous substances, nitrate

Cars:

• Lambda sensor determines the O2 in the exhaust gas

• Distances

• Pressure, temperature, current …..

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Remote environmental

sensing system

GPRS NETWORK (GES) Central

Monitoring Station

(CMS)

(GES) Central

Monitoring Station

(CMS)

DA

TA

A

CQ

UIS

ITIO

N

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Health application

Application in chronic disease monitoring, personal wellness

monitoring and personal fitness

1. Chronic Disease Monitoring

Episodic Patient Monitoring partially

Continuous Patient Monitoring classical parameter

Patient Alarm Monitoring yes

2. Personal Wellness Monitoring

Senior Activity Monitoring partially

Safety Monitoring partially

3. Personal Fitness Monitoring

Monitoring and Tracking Fitness Level partially

Personalized Fitness Schedule no

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O2, CO2, pH in organs

Optochemical glas fibre

sensor, 0.2 mm diameter

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Health application

Products available / under development for Health Care

Non stationary

• Glucose sensors invasive!

• Pulse oximeter

• Electrocardiograph (ECG)

• Heart beat detector

• Social alarm devices

Urgent need of wireless sensor devices communicating with services. Very few devices available

This will allow safe, healthy and independent living conditions for the disabled or elderly.

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Controlled situation

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Positive aspects – summary

Health related sensing systems:

• Change in medical treatment strategies – reshaping of health care: – Now: post - incidents actions – reactive health care

– Future: pre – incident treatments – proactive health care

– Continuous monitoring to reduce hospitalization days and health care costs

• Point-of-care medical device

• Wireless sensors for better health care and patient monitoring to provide healthy and independent living conditions

Food control related systems:

• Better and constant quality

• Reduced risk of non food components (cleaning chemicals, broken glass …)

• Reduced risk of deteriorated food

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Positive aspects – summary

Environmental monitoring:

• Better quality of life

• Control of release of harmful substances

• Early warning

Technological process monitoring

• Reduction of deficient products

• Increased product quality

• Reduced costs

• Improved sustainability

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Questionable aspects

Past & Present Present & Future

Device 1 Device 2 Device 1 Device 2

Human Human – recording device

Manufacturer controlled device communication – not transparent

what, whom, when

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Questionable aspects

• There already exists and is under rapid development

a network of connected objects:

– Vehicles, machine components - intelligent machines

– Domestic consumable durables – smart home

– The clothes we ware – smart clothes

• All items are hooked up via identification and

tracking technologies - wireless sensors, actuators,

RFID (radio frequency identification) - to a network

with a speed most of us have yet to comprehend.

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The internet of things

This network of connected objects is the

"Internet of Things IoT“

first mentioned by Kevin Ashton in 1999

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Statements

Kevin Kelly executive editor of Wired Magazine (2004):

“Before 2030 everything will become connected and the web will be

the environment.

A pair of sneakers will become a “chip with heels”

A car will become an “assembly of sensors” and a “chip on wheels”

Kevin Kelly (2007)

"In 5000 days, since the start of the internet, less time than it takes

for a child to progress through the school system, the world has

been transformed. Online social networking through applications like

Myspace and Facebook are changing the nature of social

interactions”

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The next 5000 days of the web

• “The speed in which the web transforms the industrialised world

shows no signs of slowing.

Every item, every artefact will become part of the web."

• CISCO predicts 50 billion connected active and passive sensors

by 2020!

• The IoT and the number of devices connected to the internet will

exceed in 2015 the number of people populating the entire planet.

• http://blogs.cisco.com/news/the-internet-of-things-infographic

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The situation 5000 days ago

• No newspaper producer considered that the computer will shake the

power of the printing press!

• Which record company executive disbelieved its companies progress

and increased revenue?

• Who imagined that one can carry an entire library in a briefcase?

• Who had an idea that all our movements are tracked and recorded?

• It is evidenced by the increasing low cost of technologies as sensors

and radio-frequency identification (RFID) that almost any physical

artefact, any animal – any human ? - can be identified and tracked

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The situation now

Now we have already the interconnection of many things:

• It is also an integral part of your / my life.

• Most of us carry RFID in our wallets without even knowing that we

are engaging with network technology.

We hold the cards we use to get into the office to the RFID reader

embedded in the wall near the door. This reader pushes a

constant wave of energy. The antenna in the chip picks up the

energy, then moves it on to the chip that says "hello".

The number appears in a database and any action can be attached

to that number: accept as OK and allow to pass.

• The computer is in our pocket and yet it has disappeared from our

consciousness

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The situation in 1000 days

Consumables will tell us what has to be done:

• The refrigerator and the storage cabinet will let you know what

you have to cook because this is available in your household

• The vacuum cleaner or air cleaner will send text messages to remind you that the filter is clogged

• Your flowers at the office will send SMS if they have to be watered

• You might receive this messages every hour

• We will loose our personal responsibility !

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Statements

Maria Karyda, Stefan Gritzalis, Jong Hyuk Park; Springer 2007

Two major society trends:

• There is a shift in the perception of privacy protection, which is

increasingly considered as a responsibility of the individual, instead of

an individuals right protected by a central authority, such as a state

and its laws.

• It appears that current IT research is largely based on the assumption

that personal privacy is quantifiable and bargainable.

There is a need for public awareness and discussion

and input from other related disciplines such as law

sociology and psychology!

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Joke on a web site:

The consumer yells:

“Where are my damned keys?”

The keys answer:

"On top of the refrigerator you idiot!”

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Thank you for your attention !

Thanks to the organizers for this

interesting conference!

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Eye – way of operation

• Light sensitive photoreceptor cells transfer light signals into nerve

impulses

• Photoreceptor cells - 120 million rods and 7 million cones - in the retina

contain photosensitive rhodopsin molecules. An incoming light quant –

photon – changes rhodopsins conformation.

One rhodopsin molecule activated by one photon activates up to 2000

transducing molecules.

• Initiates an enzyme cascade – the visual signal transduction cascade

causing changes of the nerve cells activity

(noble price medicine biochemist Georg Wald 1967)

• Bipolar cells in the retina are activated – generating an ON and OFF bipolar

signal – a digitized signal. First signal processing – signal enhancement.

• Visual nerve – one million nerve fibres – signal transfer via electrical

signals. This is a membrane potential caused by active ion transport

through membranes

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Working principle

• A SENSOR is a device transforming non-electrical signals –

biological, chemical, physical - into electrical signals

non electrical space electrical space

Transducer have many forms depending upon the parameters being measured –

electrochemical, optical, mass and thermal changes are the most common

Input value Transducer Transformer

Measurement

value

Display

Data

processing

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Application health care

• The US chronic disease device market: – US $3.8 billion in 2010

– US $26 billion by 2015

• 2.3 million nodes (internet connections) used in 2010 – 5 % of the elderly population in North America and Japan.

• Netherlands: 50 percent of seniors are interested in smart-home applications to aid in health, first responders’ reaction times and security improvement.

(Forrester Research, Inc. 2004 and 2011)

• The European Community sponsored the SOPRANO Study

Results: Urgent need of wireless low-power sensors communicating with services. This allows safe, healthy and independent living conditions for the disabled or elderly.

Point-of-care medical devices - Wireless sensors for better health care