SBIR Phase I: Prototype Non-Contacting Piston Position Sensors for Fluid Power Actuators

该项目更广泛的影响/商业潜力包括开发和演示一种原型位置传感器，该传感器将有助于将液压和气动执行器转换为？智能？设备。位置传感器将实现内置的自我诊断、精确的反馈控制、节能操作、更快的工业制造和材料处理流程，以及在移动车辆上更安全的操作，在运动过程中自动考虑障碍物和危险区域的位置。新传感器的价值主张来自于其较低的成本、易于安装和非接触式操作。该项目将帮助一家初创公司展示其传感器在大型工业和越野移动公司提供的多种执行器产品上的性能。预计这将导致传感器的生存能力、客户对传感器的订单以及公司收入的增长。该项目研究的技术领域是智能传感器，目标市场领域是工业机械和越野农业和建筑车辆。这个小型企业创新研究(SBIR)第一阶段项目将开发一种可用于生产并准备在真实世界的工业和移动车辆应用中进行现场测试的位置传感器原型。该传感器利用远距离磁场模型、单板冗余磁传感器和自适应估计算法，提供了一种与市场上其他位置传感器相比具有体积小、非侵入性、非接触式、安装方便和成本较低的新型位置传感器。正在开发的传感器技术的创新包括使用非线性估计算法，该算法避免了复杂的非线性函数的微分，提供了更高的精度，并且在微处理器上实现的计算效率更高。该传感器还包括自动校准算法，可以纠正传感器的位置和定向误差，以确保更换气缸时的准确性能。该研究项目将在实验室中展示传感器原型在由大型工业和越野车公司合作提供的多个执行器上的性能。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this project includes the development and demonstration of a prototype position sensor that will help convert hydraulic and pneumatic actuators into ?smart? devices. The position sensor will enable built-in self-diagnostics, precise feedback control, energy efficient operation, faster industrial manufacturing and material handling processes, and safer operations on mobile vehicles that take locations of obstacles and danger zones automatically into account during motion. The value proposition of the new sensor comes from its lower cost, ease of installation, and its non-contacting operation. This project will help a start-up company demonstrate the performance of its sensor on multiple actuator products provided by large industrial and off-road mobile companies. This is expected to result in establishing the viability of the sensor, customer orders for the sensor, and growth in company revenues. The technology area addressed by the research in this project is smart sensors and the targeted market sector is industrial machines and off-road agriculture and construction vehicles.This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project will develop a prototype position sensor that is production-ready and ready for field testing in real-world industrial and mobile vehicle applications. The sensor utilizes a large-distance magnetic field model, redundant magnetic sensors on a single sensor board and adaptive estimation algorithms to provide a novel position sensor that is small, non-intrusive, non-contacting, easy to install and lower cost compared to other position sensors on the market. The innovations in the sensor technology being developed include the use of a nonlinear estimation algorithm that avoids differentiation of complex nonlinear functions, provides more accuracy and is computationally efficient for implementation on a microprocessor. The sensor also includes an auto-calibration algorithm that corrects for sensor location and orientation errors so as to ensure accurate performance with changing cylinders. The research project will demonstrate the performance of the sensor prototype in the lab on multiple actuators provided by collaborating large industrial and off-road vehicle companies.