Nevertheless, in terms of industrial applications, other characteristics besides the transduction principle become more important, namely technology, materials, accuracy, and costs. The insides of sensor systems become less important from an application perspective. | Sensors in Intelligent Buildings Overview and Trends view . Nevertheless in terms of industrial applications other characteristics besides the transduction principle become more important namely technology materials accuracy and costs. The insides of sensor systems become less important from an application perspective. All sensor systems are facing a noticeable upward trend in performance requirements for maintenance down-time reliability fault tolerance fault recovery and adaptability. Industrial applications in the area of consumer goods are also subject to cost pressure where the value of electronic products has risen while costs have continuously fallen in past decades. Current trends in sensor systems can be summarized as follows see Figure 1. Higher performance of sensors. Sensor accuracy and linearity both classical problems of sensor systems have been improved in all areas. Today s sensor systems also work under better conditions and with higher reliability. Greater demands for environmental protection have led to the development of highly reliable sensors. Development efforts are still focused on maintenance-free sensors with long life expectancy and low electric power dissipation. New sensors have been developed such as torque sensors accelerometers acoustic sensors pattern information-sensing devices and smell sensors. Olfactory sensors and voice recognition combined with synthetic speech generation technology will make remote-controlled home appliances a reality. 19 Intelligence 4 - Self-identification - Self-diagnosis - Self-calibrating - Multi-sensing Signal Transformation Processing Miniaturization 4 - Smaller scale - Integration - Nanotechnology in future i Integration 4 - Smart sensor systems - Complex systems for sensing transforming and processing signals mechanical thermal chemical Multi-Sensing 4 electrical radiant 1 Actors I magnetic Performance 4 - Accuracy - Linearity - Reliability - Maintenance-free Standardization of Interfaces
