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To give a background to the automotive sensor industry and consider recent developments in sensors used in vehicle safety systems.

This paper describes the early development of the automotive sensor industry and gives examples of present‐day applications. It subsequently discusses development in advanced vehicle safety systems.

The advent of cost‐effective electronics in 1970 led to the development of numerous automotive systems such as electronic engine management which use a diversity of sensors. Since, the 1990s, safety has emerged as a major consideration and features such as traction control, ABS, stability control systems and air bags have been applied across a wide sector of the industry. New active safety systems which respond to passenger weight and position, as well as collision avoidance systems which can sense the vehicle's external environment are being developed and applied widely. These are fuelling the automotive sensor market which is forecast to reach 2.24 billion units per annum by 2010.Safety system integration is a major theme of present developments.

This paper shows that customer demands for enhanced safety have driven the development and rapid adoption of advanced vehicle safety systems. This has boosted the markets for automotive sensors.

An investigation has been carried out by Quo‐Tec Limited, on behalf of the Department of Trade and Industry's Advanced Sensors Technology Transfer Programme, to determine the opportunities which exist in the UK transportation industries for advanced sensors. The study was concerned particularly with the identification of new business opportunities for UK Small and Medium‐sized Enterprises (SMEs). The study's boundaries were defined as the automotive, aerospace, rail and marine transportation sectors and the advanced sensor technologies of optical fibres and solid state. Piezoelectric, capacitive, inductive magnetoresistive, thin film, thick film and micromachined silicon devices were all included in the term solid state. These were highlighted because of the proven strength of UK research in many of these areas and yet, in many cases, a current lack of significant UK commercial exploitation. Through literature reviews, extensive telephone interviews and face‐to‐face discussions with key individuals in over 90 transportation companies, sensor companies and research institutions, a similar number of sensor requirements were identified. From this number, those requirements best addressed by optical or solid state sensor technology were selected. A criterion applied in the selection was that the need could be addressed by a UK SME (either alone or in collaboration) with a reasonable expectation that a sensor could be commercially available within five years. Preferably, proven technology should be available — the job of a sensor company is to develop the technology into a commercial product, not to do the fundamental research work to prove the technology itself. This article comprises some “prime” opportunities, thus identified, applicable to the automotive industry.

Pressure, being one of the key variables investigated in scientific and engineering research, requires critical and accurate measurement techniques. With the advancements in materials and machining technologies, there is a large leap in the measurement techniques including the development of micro electromechanical systems (MEMS) sensors. These sensors are one to two orders smaller in magnitude than traditional sensors and combine electrical and mechanical components that are fabricated using integrated circuit batch-processing technologies. MEMS are finding enormous applications in many industrial fields ranging from medical to automotive, communication to electronics, chemical to aviation and many more with a potential market of billions of dollars. MEMS pressure sensors are now widely used devices owing to their intrinsic properties of small size, light weight, low cost, ease of batch fabrication and integration with an electronic circuit. This paper aims to identify and analyze the common pressure sensing techniques and discuss their uses and advantages. As per our understanding, usage of MEMS pressure sensors in the aerospace industry is quite limited due to cost constraints and indirect measurement approaches owing to the inability to locate sensors in harsh environments. The purpose of this study is to summarize the published literature for application of MEMS pressure sensors in the said field. Five broad application areas have been investigated including: propulsion/turbomachinery applications, turbulent flow diagnosis, experimentalaerodynamics, micro-flow control and unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)/micro aerial vehicle (MAV) applications.

The first part of the paper deals with an introduction to MEMS pressure sensors and mathematical relations for its fabrication. The second part covers pressure sensing principles followed by the application of MEMS pressure sensors in five major fields of aerospace industry.

In this paper, various pressure sensing principles in MEMS and applications of MEMS technology in the aerospace industry have been reviewed. Five application fields have been investigated including: Propulsion/Turbomachinery applications, turbulent flow diagnosis, experimental aerodynamics, micro-flow control and UAV/MAV applications. Applications of MEMS sensors in the aerospace industry are quite limited due to requirements of very high accuracy, high reliability and harsh environment survivability. However, the potential for growth of this technology is foreseen due to inherent features of MEMS sensors’ being light weight, low cost, ease of batch fabrication and capability of integration with electric circuits. All these advantages are very relevant to the aerospace industry. This work is an endeavor to present a comprehensive review of such MEMS pressure sensors, which are used in the aerospace industry and have been reported in recent literature.

As per the author’s understanding, usage of MEMS pressure sensors in the aerospace industry is quite limited due to cost constraints and indirect measurement approaches owing to the inability to locate sensors in harsh environments. Present work is a prime effort in summarizing the published literature for application of MEMS pressure sensors in the said field. Five broad application areas have been investigated including: propulsion/turbomachinery applications, turbulent flow diagnosis, experimental aerodynamics, micro-flow control and UAV/MAV applications.

Reports on a one‐day Institute of Physics seminar on new developments in automotive sensors for hostile environments. Provides details of the nine papers presented.

The manufacturing domain presently focusing on Industry 4.0 (I4.0). One such domain is the automotive sector. The purpose of this study is to analyse the I4.0 research studies with a focus on the automotive sector using a systematic literature review (SLR).

This paper presents a SLR of previous studies on I4.0 characteristics from its inception to performance measures focusing on the automotive sector. A total of 90 papers published in reputed journals during 2014–2020 were collected from major publishers, namely, Elsevier, Springer, Taylor and Francis, Emerald, Institute of Electrical and Electronics, MDPI, etc.

The findings of the study provided vital insights on various perspectives of I4.0 in an automotive organization. Moreover, this systematic analysis would help the automotive industry policymakers in implementing I4.0 in an organization. Based on the SLR, a conceptual framework is established to guide industry practitioners towards I4.0 implementation. The review findings could be used to carry out future studies in assessing the readiness of I4.0 in the organization with the help of a survey.

The limitation of the study is in the adoption of the sampling approach. In the present study, conference papers and refereed journals have been considered based on the relevance of I4.0 in the automotive industry. As I4.0 is a growing concept, non-refereed articles, book chapters and white papers may cover practical aspects regarding I4.0 implementation that need to be considered for depth analysis. Moreover, the framework needs to be validated with various automotive industries for ensuring practical validity.

The unique contribution of the study is the SLR of I4.0 in manufacturing with a focus on the automotive sector.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an insight into China's burgeoning sensor industry.

Following an introduction to the Chinese economy and sensor market, this paper considers a number of key sensor applications and technologies and highlights a selection of Chinese sensor manufacturers and their products. It concludes with an overview of the country's sensor research effort.

This shows that China's sensor market is expanding very rapidly and is being served by a fast‐growing community of manufacturers who are producing large numbers of sensors for physical and chemical variables. The automotive sector is one of the leading users of sensors and is aiding China's micro‐electromechanical system industry. China has a large and active sensor research community.

This paper provides an up‐to‐date review of the Chinese sensor industry, illustrating its very rapid, recent growth and huge future potential.

The purpose of this paper is to describe common methods for evaluating the performance of wireless devices such as wireless sensors in harsh radio environments.

The paper describes how measurements of real‐world propagation environments can be used to support the evaluation process, then presents representative measurement data from multipath environments where sensor networks are likely to be deployed: a fixed‐infrastructure, process‐control environment (here an oil refinery), and a heavy industrial environment (here an automotive assembly plant).

Results on the characterization of multipath in the propagation channel are summarized and how these results may be used in the performance evaluation of sensor networks is discussed.

The paper describes measurement results from environments where little open‐literature data exists on point‐to‐point propagation, specifically high‐multipath environments. These highly reflective scenarios can present difficulties for deployment of sensor networks.

Examines the thirteenth published year of the ITCRR. Runs the whole gamut of textile innovation, research and testing, some of which investigates hitherto untouched aspects. Subjects discussed include cotton fabric processing, asbestos substitutes, textile adjuncts to cardiovascular surgery, wet textile processes, hand evaluation, nanotechnology, thermoplastic composites, robotic ironing, protective clothing (agricultural and industrial), ecological aspects of fibre properties – to name but a few! There would appear to be no limit to the future potential for textile applications.

Examines the tenth published year of the ITCRR. Runs the whole gamut of textile innovation, research and testing, some of which investigates hitherto untouched aspects. Subjects discussed include cotton fabric processing, asbestos substitutes, textile adjuncts to cardiovascular surgery, wet textile processes, hand evaluation, nanotechnology, thermoplastic composites, robotic ironing, protective clothing (agricultural and industrial), ecological aspects of fibre properties – to name but a few! There would appear to be no limit to the future potential for textile applications.