Volume 79, Issue 11 -

Multiaxial force sensors are only commercially available as high-precision, but also very expensive devices. This limits their application in many areas (e. g. medical and rehabilitation devices or force controlled robotics) where large numbers of sensors would be needed at acceptably low cost. This paper presents the innovative concept of a 6 DOF force-torque sensor, which enables automated large volume production at low cost and good reproducibility to enable the above mentioned new applications. The concepts have been worked out theoretically and validated experimentally using lab concept demonstrators. Having concrete demands for a future application the concept can be used as a basis of a product development process.

For the first time digital holography allows the 3D-measurement of even rough surfaces. This is made possible by the superposition of laser beams in Digital Multiwavelength Holography. For that a 3D topographic image is numerically calculated from several interferograms. The system “HoloTop” detects microstructures over an area of 20 mm×20 mm within one second only, thus making it suitable for a 100% inspection directly in the production line.

The composite-element of our pressure sensor is a piezoresistive high-pressure sensing element for 500 MPa. The functionality is based on mechanical stress due to the hydrostatic pressure load. The effect of the ratio of the thicknesses of silicon and the mechanical mismatched glass resulting from analytical approach is shown by metrological characterization of seven sensing elements with different thickness ratios. The composite elements with the highest glass thicknesses — more than twice that of silicon — exhibits a strong nonlinearity.

Sensor applications and analysis of data became an important issue in today´s agriculture. The sensor techniques available provide the possibility to adapt the applications on a site-specific basis to the current demand of a crop. Sensor fusion and data analysis are main research tasks to further improve the site-specific management of fields.

An innovative alternative to the conventional method of blood typing is based on the application of synthetic antibodies, which are synthesized by imprinting of polymers with native erythrocytes. Simple, low cost monomers can be used. In this way robust materials are generated by this strategy. Polyvinylpyrrolidons, polyacrylates or polyurethanes are suitable for this purpose. The transducers are coated by patterned polymers and combined with a flow system. In this way erythrocytes in blood can be characterized according to the AB0 groups, but also in respect to sub-groups.

The analytical modeling of coil impedances is a fundamental task for the design of antennas and eddy current sensors in different application fields. Not only changes of impedance but also the absolute values of the coil impedances are important because they provide a more detailed approach for magnetic material and coil characterization. Magnetic vector potential methods can give an accurate modeling of the magnetic field taking into account eddy current effects. Due to convergence problems during impedance calculation only the change of impedance is obtainable by the magnetic field model itself. These convergence problems can be explained and overcome by applying the concept of the internal and external inductance. In this paper we extent existing analytical impedance modeling techniques from differential impedance models to absolute impedance models. The provided model gives an analytical formula for coil impedances including eddy current influence in the target as well as in the coil itself. With the absolute impedance model available, the maximum of information can be extracted from the measured impedance spectra. The calculated results are compared to experimental values in the frequency range of 10 kHz to 10 MHz.