Interfacing intelligent systems to the natural world: micro-sensors and micro-actuators

Sensors and actuators constitute the front-end devices of intelligent systems for information acquisition and action, namely, to perform the transduction function. Advances in microsystems technology have brought about further integration of machine intelligence into microsensors and microactuators. Accelerometers, inkjet print heads, projection displays, read/write data storage heads, biosensor chips are just some of the many new products, based on this technology, that have come onto the market in recent years. In this paper, the enabling technology will be described, followed by examples of applications and discussion of future issues