Sensor intelligence in the smart factory

David Hannaby, SICK UK industrial sensor specialist, explores how the development of intelligent sensors is providing is facilitating productivity with smaller and smaller batch sizes, perhaps down to a theoretical limit of ‘Batch Size 1’.

In the Smart Factory, sensors are intelligent. Smart Sensors are the ‘unsung heroes’; the glue that holds together automated environments. While the Smart Factory achieves communication between machines, the corresponding goal of sensor technology must be to first sense any object, no matter what it is, or what the environmental conditions are…