CONTENTS & COMMENT Vol 1 No 1 Vol 1 No 1 CONTENTS


Front cover The publishers would like to thank PCB Piezotronics Limited, an MTS Systems Corporation, for the use of their images on the front cover of DAQ, Sensors & Instrumentation.


2 & 3 Sensors for


Autonomy Car makers and their technology suppliers descended on the Consumer Electronics Show to demonstrate what they’ve achieved in autonomous control during the last 12 months.


5 A Quantum of


Precision Scientists from the UK and Korea have used quantum optics to demonstrate new levels of accuracy in remote measurements using multiphoton interferometry.


6 Powerless Sensing Passive battery-free sensor tags harvest energy from RF data collection antennas for data acquisition at the edge of the Industrial IoT in applications such as manufacturing quality control.


9 Smart sensors for NDT Innovative micromagnetic sensor systems enable destructive testing to be replaced by faster, cheaper parametric NDT methods in the steel production industry.


10 Technology events Important dates for your diary.


12 Ultra-Compact laser


sensor A range of ultra-compact laser triangulation sensors has been developed for object sorting as well as dimensions, displacements and profiles.


15, 16 & 18 Company Guide A guide to DAQ, Sensors and Instrumentation suppliers.


20 Health monitoring


with graphene A highly sensitive strain gauge using a conductive emulsion of graphene has been developed, which provides compact, non- intrusive health monitoring opportunities.


© Concorde Publishing Ltd 2018 Join us online at https://goo.gl/inAElE or scan the QR Code, right Follow us on Twitter @eeonlineorg The source guide for engineers, scientists and technicians T


Spinal surgery uses real-time sensor data


he development of sensor technology is moving at breakneck speed and the assimilation of sensor-generated data is reaching into the far corners of the technological world. In this


issue we cover two medical applications – one below and another on the Inside Back Page. These technologies might be finding early applications in medical technology, but the potential goes far wider. On our inside pages we cover more exciting applications of Sensors and DAQ in other fields. A common theme in many of thse applications is the use in real- time of information generated by the sensors. Manual spine stabilisation surgery is one of the most frequent back


❱ ❱ Spine model with four pedicle screws for spine stabilisation


surgeries performed and numbers rising with an ageing population require more and more surgical procedures to address degenerative spine disease. The challenge of manual spine surgery using so-called pedicle screws to fuse and stabilise functionally unstable vertebrae is the “uneven terrain” of vertebral bone. The functional articulation of the human vertebral spine that confers


lateral and rotational mobility, static stability and compressional strength is only possible because vertebrae have a complex shape and bone density composition. Drilling and positioning a screw into a highly variable part of the spine, whether manually or with image guidance technologies, has a success rate of just 85%. The screw may miss the central part of the vertebrae or the sharp tip sticks out, irritating surrounding tissue or nerves. Now, a team of researchers including those from the University of Bern and the Swiss Centre for Electronics and Microtechnology, have developed a high-precision, sensor-based surgical robot for spinal operations together. By using the complexity of vertebral anatomy like a “sensor map”, the robotic drill is able to “feel” across the bone terrain and together with so- called Electromyography (EMG) neuro monitoring can avoid obstacles including nerves and boundaries of the bone. Thicker bone, thinner bone and nerves are sensed with robotic perception and verified at high speed with the relevant information from imaging data. This way, the surgical robotic technology potentially allows the neurosurgeon to place pedicle screws perfectly and with precision, every time. “For the first time, the neurosurgeon has real-time data on where the drilling instrument is during the procedure and the surgical robot acts with supreme accuracy shutting down the drilling far sooner that a human operator could, thereby avoiding breakthrough or injury. We see this as the future of spine surgery,” commented Andreas Raabe, Chairman and Professor of Neurosurgery at the Inselspital, Bern University Hospital. “The use of EMG as a cross check control loop to give early warning on the proximity of nerve tissue and the overall integration of a sensor-driven surgical robotic system is a ground- breaking use of this technology in neurosurgery and will lead to many other clinical applications going forward.”


Andy Pye, Editor


Concorde Publishing Ltd 100 Borough High Street, London SE1 1LB, UK Tel: +44 (0)20 7863 3079 Email: daqsensors@concordepublishing.com Web: www.EnvironmentalEngineering.org.uk


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