Sensors and actuators are used daily in countless applications to ensure more accurate and reliable workflows and safer environments. Many students and young engineers with engineering and science backgrounds often come prepared with circuits and programming skills but have little knowledge of sensors and sensing strategies and their interfacing.
In this fully revised and expanded second edition, the author looks at sensors and actuators based on a broad area of detection methods. He takes a general and applications-oriented approach to the topic and makes it discipline-independent to cater for a broad audience. Important coverage is given to interfacing (the processes and mechanisms between the sensors and actuators) that makes systems work reliably and accurately. Topics covered include different type of sensors and actuators (temperature, thermal, optical, electric, magnetic, mechanical, acoustic, chemical, radiation, and smart sensors) and their interfaces. The book contains numerous examples and problem sets as well as useful appendices.
Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 2: Performance characteristics of sensors and actuators
Chapter 3: Temperature sensors and thermal actuators
Chapter 4: Optical sensors and actuators
Chapter 5: Electric and magnetic sensors and actuators
Chapter 6: Mechanical sensors and actuators
Chapter 7: Acoustic sensors and actuators
Chapter 8: Chemical and biological sensors and actuators
Chapter 9: Radiation sensors and actuators
Chapter 10: MEMS and smart sensors and actuators
Chapter 11: Interfacing methods and circuits
Chapter 12: Interfacing to microprocessors
Appendix A: Least squares polynomials and data fitting
Appendix B: Thermoelectric reference tables
Appendix C: Computation on microprocessors
Answers to problems
