“Smart Sensors: trends, opportunities and challenges for the future”

Sensors are becoming an integral part of our lives. From the surrounding we live in, the equipment and systems in our homes, our cars, yes even our bodies; smart sensor solutions are present enabling new applications and improving existing ones. Smart sensors also offer increased design freedom and often lower the cost of products and solutions. In order to address the diversity in the applications and smart sensors solutions, a fundamental understanding of the individual technology layers from transducers to the complex sensor networks in a system perspective is essential. It is the system solution that transforms often relatively simple transducers in to smart sensor systems. An important challenge is that realizing viable technologies towards establishing sensor platforms. This brings an opportunity, and a challenge, for the optical sensor solutions, which are strong candidates for providing a complete system level solution.