Module-2

IoT Sensing and

Actuation
 Syllabus
• Introduction
• Sensors
• Sensor Characteristics
• Sensorial Deviations,
• Sensing Types
• Sensing Considerations
• Actuators
• Actuator Types
• Actuator Characteristics

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 Outcomes!
• List the salient features of transducers
• Differentiate between sensors and actuators
• Characterize sensors and distinguish between types of sensors
• List the multi-faceted considerations associated with sensing
• Characterize actuators and distinguish between types of
actuators
• List the multi-faceted considerations associated with actuation

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 Introduction
• A major part of IoT applications involves sensing in one form or the other.
The applications may be it a consumer IoT, an industrial IoT, or just plain
hobby-based deployments of IoT solutions—sensing forms the first step.
• Incidentally, actuation forms the final step in the whole operation of IoT
application deployment.
• The basic science of sensing and actuation is based on the process of
transduction.
• Transduction is the process of energy conversion from one form to another.
A transducer is a physical means of enabling transduction.
• Transducers take energy in any form [electrical, mechanical, chemical, light,
sound, and others] and convert it into another.
• Sensors and actuators are deemed as transducers.
• For example, in a public announcement system, a microphone converts
sound waves into electrical signals, which is amplified by an amplifier
system.

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Basic outline of the differences between transducers, sensors, and actuators

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 Sensors
• Sensors are devices that can measure, or quantify, or respond to the
ambient changes in their environment or within the intended zone of
their deployment.
• They generate responses to external stimuli or physical phenomenon
through characterization of the input functions and their conversion
into typically electrical signals.
• For example, heat is converted to electrical signals in a temperature
sensor, or atmospheric pressure is converted to electrical signals in a
barometer.
• A sensor is only sensitive to the measured property. It is insensitive to
any other property besides what it is designed to detect.
• Finally, a sensor does not influence the measured property (e.g.,
measuring the temperature does not reduce or increase the
temperature).

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 Sensors
• Figure shows the simple outline of a sensing task.
• Here, a temperature sensor keeps on checking an environment for changes.
In the event of a fire, the temperature of the environment goes up. The
temperature sensor notices this change in the temperature of the room and
promptly communicates this information to a remote monitor via the
processor.

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 Sensors
• The various sensors can be classified based on:
1) Power requirements,
2) Sensor output
3) Property to be measured.
• Power Requirements: The way sensors operate decides the power
requirements that must be provided for an IoT implementation.
• Some sensors need to be provided with separate power sources for
them to function, whereas some sensors do not require any power
sources.
• Depending on the requirements of power, sensors can be of two
types.
(i) Active: Active sensors do not require an external circuitry to provide it with power.
It directly responds to the external stimuli from its ambient environment and
converts it into an output signal. For example, a photodiode converts light into
electrical impulses.
(ii) Passive: Passive sensors require an external mechanism to power them up. The
sensed properties are modulated with the sensor’s inherent characteristics to
generate patterns in the output of the sensor. For example, a thermistor’s resistance
can be detected by applying voltage difference across it or passing a current through
it.
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 Sensors
• Sensor Output: The output of a sensor helps in deciding the
additional components to be integrated with an IoT node or system.
• Most of modern-day processors are digital; digital sensors can be
directly integrated to the processors. However, the integration of
analog sensors to these digital processors or IoT nodes requires
additional interfacing mechanisms such as analog to digital
converters (ADC), voltage level converters, and others.
• Sensors are broadly divided into two types, depending on the type
of output generated from these sensors;
(i) Analog: Analog sensors generate an output signal or voltage, which is proportional
to the quantity being measured and is continuous in time and amplitude. Physical
quantities such as temperature, speed, pressure, displacement, strain, and others are
all continuous and categorized as analog quantities.
(ii) Digital: These sensors generate the output of discrete time digital representation
(time, or amplitude, or both) of a quantity being measured, in the form of output
signals or voltages. Typically, binary output signals in the form of a logic 1 or a logic 0
for ON or OFF, respectively are associated with digital sensors. The generated
discrete (non-continuous) values may be output as a single “bit” (serial transmission),
eight of which combine to produce a single “byte” output (parallel transmission) in
digital sensors.

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 Sensors
• Measured Property: The property of the environment being
measured by the sensors can be crucial in deciding the number of
sensors in an IoT implementation.
• Some properties to be measured do not show high spatial variations
and can be quantified only based on temporal variations in the
measured property, such as ambient temperature, atmospheric
pressure, and others.
• Whereas some properties to be measured show high spatial as well
as temporal variations such as sound, image, and others.
• Depending on the properties to be measured, sensors can be of two
types.
(i) Scalar: Scalar sensors produce an output proportional to the magnitude of the
quantity being measured. The output is in the form of a signal or voltage.
Examples of such measurable physical quantities include color, pressure,
temperature, strain, and others. A thermometer is an example of a scalar sensor
that has the ability to detect changes in ambient or object temperatures. Factors
such as changes in sensor orientation or direction do not affect these sensors.
(ii) Vector: Vector sensors are affected by the magnitude as well as the direction
and/or orientation of the property they are measuring. Physical quantities such
as velocity and images that require additional information besides their
magnitude require vector quantities. Measuring such quantities are undertaken
using vector sensors. For example, an electronic gyroscope.
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• A sensor node is made up of a combination of sensors, a processor unit, a
radio unit, and a power unit.
• The wireless nature of sensor nodes would also allow them to be freely
relocatable and deployed in large.
• The functional outline of a typical IoT sensor node is shown in Figure.

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Sensors used for IoT-based sensing applications

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 Sensor Characteristics
• All sensors can be defined by their ability to measure or capture a
certain phenomenon and report them as output signals to various
other systems.
• However, even within the same sensor type and class, sensors can
be characterized by their ability to sense the phenomenon based on
the following three fundamental properties.
a) Sensor Resolution: The smallest change in the measurable quantity that a
sensor can detect is referred to as the resolution of a sensor. For digital
sensors, the digital output of that the sensor is capable of quantifying is its
sensor resolution. The more the resolution of a sensor, the more accurate is
the precision. A sensor’s accuracy does not depend upon its resolution.
b) Sensor Accuracy: The accuracy of a sensor is the ability of that sensor to
measure the environment of a system as close to its true measure as possible.
For example, a weight sensor detects the weight of a 100 kg mass as 99.98 kg.
We can say that this sensor is 99:98% accurate, with an error rate of 0:02%.
c) Sensor Precision: The principle of repeatability governs the precision of a
sensor. Only if, upon multiple repetitions, the sensor is found to have the
same error rate, can it be deemed as highly precise. For example, consider if
the same weight sensor described earlier reports measurements of 98.28 kg,
100.34 kg, and 101.11 kg upon three repeat measurements for a mass of
actual weight of 100 kg.
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 Sensorial Deviations
• Sensorial deviations that are considered as errors in sensors. Most of the sensing
in IoT is non-critical, where minor deviations in sensorial outputs seldom change
the nature of the undertaken tasks.
• However, some critical applications of IoT, such as healthcare, industrial process
monitoring, and others, do require sensors with high-quality measurement
capabilities. As the quality of the measurement obtained from a sensor is
dependent on a large number of factors.
• A sensor’s output signal going beyond its designed maximum and minimum
capacity for measurement, the sensor output is truncated to its maximum or
minimum value, which is also the sensor’s limits.
• The measurement range between a sensor’s characterized minimum and
maximum values is also referred to as the full scale range of that sensor.
• Under real conditions, the sensitivity of a sensor may differ from the value
specified for that sensor leading to sensitivity error. This deviation is mostly
attributed to sensor fabrication errors and its calibration.
• If the output of a sensor differs from the actual value to be measured by a
constant, the sensor is said to have an offset error or bias.
• Similarly, some sensors have a non-linear behavior. If a sensor’s transfer function
(TF) deviates from a straight line transfer function, it is referred to as its non-
linearity.
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 Sensorial Deviations
• Most sensors have linear behavior. If the output signal of a sensor changes slowly and
independently of the measured property, this behavior of the sensor’s output is termed
as drift.
• Noise is a temporally varying random deviation of signals.
• If a sensor’s output varies/deviates due to deviations in the sensor’s previous input
values, it is referred to as hysteresis error.
• The present output of the sensor depends on the past input values provided to the
sensor. Typically, the phenomenon of hysteresis can be observed in analog sensors,
magnetic sensors, and during heating of metal strips.
• Focusing on digital sensors, if the digital output of a sensor is an approximation of the
measured property, it induces quantization error. This error can be defined as the
difference between the actual analog signal and its closest digital approximation during
the sampling stage of the analog to digital conversion.
• Similarly, dynamic errors caused due to mishandling of sampling frequencies can give rise
to aliasing errors. Aliasing leads to different signals of varying frequencies to be
represented as a single signal in case the sampling frequency is not correctly chosen,
resulting in the input signal becoming a multiple of the sampling rate.
• Some sensors may be prone to external influences, which may not be directly linked to
the property being measured by the sensor. This sensitivity of the sensor may lead to
deviations in its output values. For example, as most sensors are semiconductor based,
they are influenced by the temperature of their environment.

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 Sensing Types
• Sensing can be broadly divided into four different categories based on the nature
of the environment being sensed and the physical sensors being used to do so.
• 1) scalar sensing, 2) multimedia sensing, 3) hybrid sensing, and 4) virtual sensing.
1. Scalar sensing
• Scalar sensing encompasses the sensing of features that can be quantified simply by
measuring changes in the amplitude of the measured values with respect to time.
• Quantities such as ambient temperature, current, atmospheric pressure, rainfall,
light, humidity, flux, and others are considered as scalar values as they normally do
not have a directional or spatial property assigned with them.
• The sensors used for measuring these scalar quantities are referred to as scalar
sensors.
2. Multimedia sensing
• Multimedia sensing encompasses the sensing of features that have a spatial variance
property associated with the property of temporal variance. These are used for
capturing the changes in amplitude of a quantifiable property concerning space
(spatial) as well as time (temporal).
• Quantities such as images, direction, flow, speed, acceleration, sound, force, mass,
energy, and momentum have both directions as well as a magnitude. Additionally,
these quantities follow the vector law of addition and hence are designated as vector
quantities.
• They might have different values in different directions for the same working
condition at the same time. The sensors used for measuring these quantities are
known as vector sensors. Figures (a) and (c) are vector sensors. A simple camera-
based multimedia sensing using surveillance as an example is shown in Figure (b).

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 The different sensing types commonly encountered in IoT

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3. Hybrid sensing
• The act of using scalar as well as multimedia sensing at the same time is
referred to as hybrid sensing.
• Many a time, there is a need to measure certain vector as well as scalar
properties of an environment at the same time. Under these conditions, a
range of various sensors are employed (multimedia sensors) to measure the
various properties of that environment at any instant of time, and temporally
map the collected information to generate new information.
• For example, in an agricultural field, it is required to measure the soil
conditions at regular intervals of time to determine plant health. Sensors such
as soil moisture and soil temperature are deployed underground to estimate
the soil’s water retention capacity and the moisture being held by the soil at
any instant of time. However, this setup only determines whether the plant is
getting enough water or not.
• The additional inclusion of a camera sensor with the plant may be able to
determine the actual condition of a plant by additionally determining the color
of leaves. The aggregate information from soil moisture, soil temperature, and
the camera sensor will be able to collectively determine a plant’s health at any
instant of time.
• Other common examples of hybrid sensing include smart parking systems,
traffic management systems, and others. Figure (c) shows an example of hybrid
sensing, where a camera and a temperature sensor are collectively used to
detect and confirm forest fires during wildlife monitoring.

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4. Virtual sensing
• There is a need for very dense and large-scale deployment of sensor nodes
spread over a large area for monitoring of parameters. One such domain is
agriculture. Here, often, the parameters being measured, such as soil
moisture, soil temperature, and water level, do not show significant spatial
variations.
• Hence, if sensors are deployed in the fields of farmer A, it is highly likely that
the measurements from his sensors will be able to provide almost concise
measurements of his neighbor B’s fields; this is especially true of fields which
are immediately surrounding A’s fields. Exploiting this property, if the data
from A’s field is digitized using an IoT infrastructure and this system advises
him regarding the appropriate watering, fertilizer, and pesticide regimen for
his crops, this advisory can also be used by B for maintaining his crops. In
short, A ’s sensors are being used for actual measurement of parameters;
whereas virtual data is being used for advising B.
• This is the virtual sensing paradigm. Figure (d) shows an example of virtual
sensing. Two temperature sensors S1 and S3 monitor three nearby events E1,
E2, and E3 (fires). The event E2 does not have a dedicated sensor for
monitoring it; however, through the superposition of readings from sensors S1
and S3, the presence of fire in E2 is inferred.

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 Sensing Considerations
• The choice of sensors in an IoT sensor node is critical.
• The following major factors influence the choice of sensors in IoT-based sensing
solutions:
1) sensing range, 2) accuracy and precision, 3) energy, and 4) device size.
1. Sensing Range: The sensing range of a sensor node defines the detection
fidelity of that node.
• Typical approaches to optimize the sensing range in deployments include fixed
k-coverage and dynamic k-coverage.
• A lifelong fixed k-coverage tends to usher in redundancy as it requires a large
number of sensor nodes, the sensing range of some of which may also overlap.
• Dynamic k-coverage incorporates mobile sensor nodes post detection of an
event, which, however, is a costly solution and may not be deployable in all
operational areas and terrains.
• Additionally, the sensing range of a sensor may also be used to signify the
upper and lower bounds of a sensor’s measurement range. For example, a
proximity sensor has a typical sensing range of a couple of meters. A camera
has a sensing range varying between tens to hundreds of meters.
• As the complexity of the sensor and its sensing range goes up, its cost
significantly increases.
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 Sensing Considerations
2. Accuracy and Precision: The accuracy and precision of measurements provided
by a sensor are critical in deciding the operations of specific functional processes.
• Typically, off-the-shelf consumer sensors are low on requirements and often
very cheap. However, their performance is limited to regular application
domains.
• For example, a standard temperature sensor can be easily integrated with
conventional components for hobby projects and day-to-day applications, but it
is not suitable for industrial processes. Regular temperature sensors have a very
low-temperature sensing range, as well as relatively low accuracy and precision.
• The use of these sensors in industrial applications, where a precision of up to 3–
4 decimal places is required. Industrial sensors are typically very sophisticated,
and as a result, very costly. However, these industrial sensors have very high
accuracy and precision score, even under harsh operating conditions.
3. Energy: The energy consumed by a sensing solution is crucial to determine the
lifetime of that solution and the estimated cost of its deployment.
• If the sensor/sensor node is so energy inefficient, the effort in maintaining the
solution and its cost goes up; whereas its deployment feasibility goes down.

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 Sensing Considerations
• Consider a scenario where sensor nodes are deployed on the top of
glaciers. Once deployed, access to these nodes is not possible.
• If the energy requirements of the sensor nodes are too high, such a
deployment will not last long, and the solution will be highly infeasible
as charging or changing of the energy sources of these sensor nodes is
not an option.
4. Device Size: Modern-day IoT applications have a wide penetration in all
domains of life.
• Most of the applications of IoT require sensing solutions which are so
small.
• Larger the size of a sensor node, larger is the obstruction caused by it,
higher is the cost and energy requirements, and lesser is its demand for
the bulk of the IoT applications.
• Consider a simple human activity detector. If the detection unit is too
large to be carried or too bulky to cause hindrance to regular normal
movements, the demand for this solution would be low.
• The wearable sensors are highly energy-efficient, small in size, and
almost part of the wearer’s regular wardrobe.

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 Actuators
• It is a machine or system’s component that can affect the
movement or control the said mechanism or the system.
• Control systems affect changes to the environment or
property they are controlling through actuators.
• The system activates the actuator through a control signal,
which may be digital or analog. It elicits a response from the
actuator, which is in the form of mechanical motion.
• The control system of an actuator can be a mechanical or
electronic system, a software-based system, a human, or
any other input.

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• Figure shows the outline of a simple actuation system.
• A remote user sends commands to a processor. The
processor instructs a motor controlled robotic arm to
perform the commanded tasks accordingly.
• The processor is primarily responsible for converting the
human commands into sequential machine-language
command sequences, which enables the robot to move. The
robotic arm finally moves the designated boxes, which was
its assigned task.

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 Actuator Types
• Actuators can be divided into seven classes: 1) Hydraulic, 2) Pneumatic, 3)
Electrical, 4) Thermal/Magnetic, 5) Mechanical, 6) Soft, and 7) Shape
memory polymers.
Hydraulic actuators:
• A hydraulic actuator works on the principle of compression and
decompression of fluids.
• These actuators facilitate mechanical tasks such as lifting loads through the
use of hydraulic power derived from fluids in cylinders or fluid motors.
• The mechanical motion applied to a hydraulic actuator is converted to either
linear, rotary, or oscillatory motion.
• The almost incompressible property of liquids is used in hydraulic actuators
for exerting significant force.
• These hydraulic actuators are also considered as stiff systems. The actuator’s
limited acceleration restricts its usage.

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 Commonly used actuators
in IoT applications

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 Actuator Types
Pneumatic actuators:
• A pneumatic actuator works on the principle of compression and decompression of
gases. These actuators use a vacuum or compressed air at high pressure and convert it
into either linear or rotary motion.
• Pneumatic rack and pinion actuators are commonly used for valve controls of water
pipes.
• Pneumatic actuators are considered as compliant systems. The actuators using
pneumatic energy for their operation are typically characterized by the quick response to
starting and stopping signals.
• Small pressure changes can be used for generating large forces through these actuators.
Pneumatic brakes are an example of this type of actuator which is so responsive that
they can convert small pressure changes applied by drives to generate the massive force
required to stop or slow down a moving vehicle.
• Pneumatic actuators are responsible for converting pressure into force. The power
source in the pneumatic actuator does not need to be stored in reserve for its operation.
Electric actuators:
• Typically, electric motors are used to power an electric actuator by generating
mechanical torque. This generated torque is translated into the motion of a motor’s
shaft or for switching (as in relays).
• For example, actuating equipment's such as solenoid valves control the flow of water in
pipes in response to electrical signals.
• This class of actuators is considered one of the cheapest, cleanest and speedy actuator
types available. Figures (a ) to (f), (i), and (j) show some of the commonly used electrical
actuators.
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 Actuator Types
Thermal or magnetic actuators:
• The use of thermal or magnetic energy is used for powering this class of actuators.
• These actuators have a very high power density and are typically compact, lightweight,
and economical.
• One classic example of thermal actuators is shape memory materials (SMMs) such as
shape memory alloys (SMAs).
• These actuators do not require electricity for actuation. They are not affected by
vibration and can work with liquid or gases.
• Magnetic shape memory alloys (MSMAs) are a type of magnetic actuators.
Mechanical actuators:
• In this, the rotary motion of the actuator is converted into linear motion to execute some
movement. The use of gears, rails, pulleys, chains, and other devices are necessary for
these actuators to operate.
• These actuators can be easily used in conjunction with pneumatic, hydraulic, or electrical
actuators. They can also work in a standalone mode. The best example of a mechanical
actuator is a rack and pinion mechanism.
• Figures (g), (h), (k)and (l) show some of the commonly available mechanical actuators.
• The hydroelectric generator shown in Figures (g) and (h) convert the water-flow induced
rotary motion of a turbine into electrical energy.
• Similarly, the mechanical switches shown in Figures (k) and (l) uses the mechanical
motion of the switch to switch on or off an electrical circuit.

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 Actuator Types
Soft actuators:
• Soft actuators (e.g., polymer-based) consists of elastomeric polymers that are used as embedded
fixtures in flexible materials such as cloth, paper, fiber, particles, and others.
• The conversion of molecular level microscopic changes into tangible macroscopic deformations is the
primary working principle of this class of actuators.
• These actuators have a high stake in modern-day robotics. They are designed to handle fragile objects
such as agricultural fruit harvesting, or performing precise operations like manipulating the internal
organs during robot-assisted surgeries.
Shape memory polymers(SMP):
• These are considered as smart materials that respond to some external stimulus by changing their
shape, and then revert to their original shape once the affecting stimulus is removed.
• Features such as high strain recovery, biocompatibility, low density, and biodegradability characterize
these materials.
• SMP-based actuators function similar to our muscles. Modern-day SMPs have been designed to
respond to a wide range of stimuli such as pH changes, heat differentials, light intensity, and frequency
changes, magnetic changes, and others.
• Photopolymer/light-activated polymers (LAP) are a particular type of SMP, which require light as a
stimulus to operate. LAP-based actuators are characterized by their rapid response times. Using only
the variation of light frequency or its intensity, LAPs can be controlled remotely without any physical
contact. The polymer retains its shape after removal of the activating light. In order to change the
polymer back to its original shape, a light stimulus of a different frequency has to be applied to the
polymer.

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 Actuator Characteristics
• The choice or selection of actuators is crucial in an IoT deployment, where
a control mechanism is required after sensing and processing of the
information obtained from the sensed environment.
• Actuators perform the physically heavier tasks in an IoT deployment; tasks
which require moving or changing the orientation of physical objects,
changing the state of objects, and other such activities.
• The correct choice of actuators is necessary for the long-term sustenance
and continuity of operations, as well as for increasing the lifetime of the
actuators themselves. A set of four characteristics can define all actuators:
1. Weight: The physical weight of actuators limits its application scope.
• For example, the use of heavier actuators is generally preferred for industrial
applications and applications requiring no mobility of the IoT deployment.
• A lightweight actuators typically find common usage in portable systems in
vehicles, drones, and home IoT applications.
• Heavier actuators also have selective usage in mobile systems, for example, landing
gears and engine motors in aircraft.

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 Actuator Characteristics
2. Power Rating: This helps in deciding the nature of the application with
which an actuator can be associated.
• The power rating defines the minimum and maximum operating power
an actuator can safely withstand without damage to itself.
• Generally, it is indicated as the power-to-weight ratio for actuators.
• For example, smaller servo motors used in hobby projects typically have
a maximum rating of 5 VDC, 500 mA, which is suitable for an operations-
driven battery-based power source.
• Exceeding this limit might be detrimental to the performance of the
actuator and may cause burnout of the motor.
• In servo motors in larger applications have a rating of 460 VAC, 2:5 A,
which requires standalone power supply systems for operations.
• It is to be noted that actuators with still higher ratings are available and
vary according to application requirements.

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 Actuator Characteristics
3. Torque to Weight Ratio: The ratio of torque to the weight of the moving
part of an instrument/device is referred to as its torque/weight ratio.
• This indicates the sensitivity of the actuator.
• Higher is the weight of the moving part; lower will be its torque to
weight ratio for a given power.
4. Stiffness and Compliance: The resistance of a material against
deformation is known as its stiffness, whereas compliance of a material is
the opposite of stiffness.
• Stiffness can be directly related to the modulus of elasticity of that
material.
• Stiff systems are considered more accurate than compliant systems as
they have a faster response to the change in load applied to it.
• For example, hydraulic systems are considered as stiff and non-
compliant, whereas pneumatic systems are considered as compliant.

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