Sensor Automation - There's an App for that

When it comes to sensors, the answer is emphatically “yes”. Before too long, it will be commonplace to download a ready-made App via a user-friendly interface to program and configure a smart sensor solution perfectly adapted to your specific application. Even for hardware with a high level of performance and complexity, like 3D Vision systems, there will be no need for the delay or expense of calling in a software coding expert.

Just as we rapidly got used to smart mobile technology, so developments in intelligent sensing are accelerating. Before too long, a sensor manufacturer’s “App Store” will be your go-to source of ready-developed application-specific solutions for all your programmable devices.

Making space for Apps

At SICK, we started out on this journey more two years ago. Already developers working for SICK and for our customers have formed a dynamic community that is collaborating and perfecting new ideas. Now the first fully-useable ‘App’ is ready and more solutions are expected soon.

Last year, SICK successfully launched AppSpace, a concept that allows free and flexible customisation of applications on SICK programmable sensors and devices with ‘click and drop’ ease. Rather than being restricted to the available pre-developed proprietary software, AppSpace’s open software platform enables system integrators and Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) to develop - and even share - their own tailor-made solutions for SICK smart sensors and vision systems.

The software elements of the system comprise SICK AppStudio to facilitate the development of customer-specific applications and SICK AppManager to import Apps into the sensor and adapt it to the task in hand. The SICK AppPool cloud service makes it easy to install, manage and allocate uploaded sensor Apps to programmable SICK devices anywhere in the world.

Hardware foundations

In the past, we got used to thinking of sensors as simple actuators or switches that deliver binary ‘on/off’ or ‘pass/fail’ raw data pulses to a machine controller or PLC.  Now, key technology advances are revolutionising the programmable potential of sensors. 

Firstly, sensors have been given an open communications gateway with the addition of IO-Link, enabling two-way information exchanges with control system.  At the same time, powerful processing capability is being embedded onboard smaller and smaller devices, providing an intelligent platform on which to write more complex functionality. These two advances create smart sensors that can monitor, evaluate and respond to the information they receive. 

So, it’s possible, for example, for a sensing system working at the field level to identify a new product batch coming along a production line and automatically change the measuring range or quality inspection parameters without having to stop the production process at all.

A faulty or dirty sensor can be located instantly via an HMI, identifiable by its own unique IP address and quickly cleaned or replaced. Instead of an operator having to waste hours of downtime testing devices to find which one is at fault, sensor status and condition can be monitored in real time: Are the signals degrading? How long before the sensor needs replacing? 

Not only does programmability with IO-Link make maintenance easier, it opens up the ability to ‘clone’ a replacement sensor and configure it rapidly.  Here, the concept of ‘AppSpace’ will really come into its own; pre-developed sensor settings are simply a ‘drag and drop’ icon that can be downloaded to the sensor via an easy graphic interface. As a result, fewer sensor variants are necessary and the stores’ inventory is dramatically reduced, because smart sensors are adaptable to many more tasks.

Industry 4.0

All of this advancement in smart sensor software and hardware is a part of a wider Industry 4.0 evolution that is seeing all sorts of programmable sensors being developed and introduced. At the same time, devices like the SIM4000 Sensor Integration Machine are connecting smart devices to work together at the field level.  
The SIM4000 is a multi-core processor with up to 25 interfaces for Ethernet-based fieldbuses, cameras, illumination, sensors and encoders. Its functionality includes 10-gigabit Ethernet interfaces for 2D or 3D cameras. Data can be merged into a point cloud, evaluated, archived, and transmitted.

It’s in the field of machine vision where the AppSpace concept has been the focus of most development to date. Vision has historically required specialist programming expertise with expensive systems, huge processing power and bulky complex hardware. Now even 3D vision has been opened up to many more users, with much more affordable all-in-one smart solutions. The SICK TriSpector, for example, has introduced entry-level ‘plug-and-play’ 3D vision.

AppSpace offers more flexibility for vision engineers and programmers because they can customise a camera or sensor for themselves and, with full access to standard image libraries such as Halcon, adapt them for their own needs.

AppSpace turns programmable devices into easily-configurable ones, even when the application is quite complex, like machine vision, or requires the integration of several devices at the machine or field level.

The first AppSpace ‘App’ to be developed is for label inspection using the SICK Inspector P programmable 2D camera. The application has been developed for the inspection of any kind of label containing bar codes and logos to human-readable optical characters and will be especially useful where quality validation of packaging labels is required in traceable products such as pharmaceuticals or perishable foods. 

The AppSpace ‘eco-system’, as it is being called, will soon be expanded to facilitate program development on other kinds of programmable SICK devices, such as RFID and LiDAR sensors.

It’s early days, but it’s clear that the potential for advancement of sensor technology will sooner or later reach the limits of what’s practical from a hardware perspective. However, the opportunities for software application developments are virtually limitless.