By virtue of their wide applications in personal electronic devices and industrial monitoring, pressure sensors are attractive candidates for promoting the advancement of science and technology in modern society. Flexible pressure sensors based on organic materials, which combine unique advantages of flexibility and low-cost, have emerged as a highly active field due to their promising applications in artificial intelligence systems and wearable health care devices. In this review, we focus on the fundamentals of flexible pressure sensors, and subsequently on several critical concepts for the exploration of functional materials and optimization of sensing devices toward practical applications. Perspectives on self-powered, transparent and implantable pressure sensing devices are also examined to highlight the development directions in this exciting research field.

Advances of flexible pressure sensors toward artificial intelligence and health care applications

Robotic medical instrument systems and associated methods utilizing an optical fiber sensors such as Bragg sensor optical fibers. In one configuration, an optical fiber is coupled to an elongate instrument body and includes a fiber core having one or more Bragg gratings. A controller is configured to initiate various actions in response thereto. For example, a controller may generate and display a graphical representation of the instrument body and depict one or more position and/or orientation variables thereof, or adjust motors of an instrument driver to reposition the catheter or another instrument. Optical fibers having Bragg gratings may also be utilized with other system components including a plurality of working instruments that are positioned within a sheath lumen, an instrument driver, localization sensors, and/or an image capture device, and may also be coupled to a patient's body or associated structure that stabilizes the body.

Robotic instrument systems and methods utilizing optical fiber sensors

Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) can be understood as the integration of sensing and intelligence to enable the structure loading and damage-provoking conditions to be recorded, analyzed, localized, and predicted in such a way that nondestructive testing becomes an integral part of them. In addition, SHM systems can include actuation devices to take proper reaction or correction actions. SHM sensing requirements are very well suited for the application of optical fiber sensors (OFS), in particular, to provide integrated, quasi-distributed or fully distributed technologies. In this tutorial, after a brief introduction of the basic SHM concepts, the main fiber optic techniques available for this application are reviewed, emphasizing the four most successful ones. Then, several examples of the use of OFS in real structures are also addressed, including those from the renewable energy, transportation, civil engineering and the oil and gas industry sectors. Finally, the most relevant current technical challenges and the key sector markets are identified. This paper provides a tutorial introduction, a comprehensive background on this subject and also a forecast of the future of OFS for SHM. In addition, some of the challenges to be faced in the near future are addressed.

Fiber Optic Sensors in Structural Health Monitoring

Optical fiber gratings have developed into a mature technology with a wide range of applications in various areas, including physical sensing for temperature, strain, acoustic waves and pressure. All of these applications rely on the perturbation of the period or refractive index of a grating inscribed in the fiber core as a transducing mechanism between a quantity to be measured and the optical spectral response of the fiber grating. This paper presents a relatively recent variant of the fiber grating concept, whereby a small tilt of the grating fringes causes coupling of the optical power from the core mode into a multitude of cladding modes, each with its own wavevector and mode field shape. The main consequence of doing so is that the differential response of the modes can then be used to multiply the sensing modalities available for a single fiber grating and also to increase the sensor resolution by taking advantage of the large amount of data available. In particular, the temperature cross-sensitivity and power source fluctuation noise inherent in all fiber grating designs can be completely eliminated by referencing all the spectral measurements to the wavelength and power level of the core mode back-reflection. The mode resonances have a quality factor of 105, and they can be observed in reflection or transmission. A thorough review of experimental and theoretical results will show that tilted fiber Bragg gratings can be used for high resolution refractometry, surface plasmon resonance applications, and multiparameter physical sensing (strain, vibration, curvature, and temperature).

Tilted fiber Bragg grating sensors

The reflection and transmission characteristics of a high-birefringence fiber loop mirror (HiBi-FLM), which is composed of a standard fiber coupler and one-section or multisection high-birefringence fibers (HBFs), are analyzed and discussed in detail. Theoretical reflectivity and transmissivity expressions for HiBi-FLMs with one-, two-, and three-section HBFs were obtained. The procedure for calculating reflectivity and transmissivity for HiBi-FLMs with n-section HBFs is given. Experimental results have verified the theoretical model. The basic characteristics of the one-section HiBi-FLM when strain and high temperature are applied to HBFs were analyzed and investigated theoretically and experimentally. The experimental results are in good agreement with the theoretical analysis. Furthermore, a strain– temperature sensor that makes use of those characteristics, which is new for applications of HiBi-FLMs, has been proposed and demonstrated.

High-birefringence fiber loop mirrors and their applications as sensors.

A relative humidity (RH) sensor based on tilted fiber Bragg grating (TFBG) is proposed by utilizing polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) as the sensitive cladding film. RH increasing in the PVA coating will result in reduction of refractive index. Due to the TFBG's sensitivity to ambient refractive index, the spectral properties of PVA-coated TFBG are modified under exposure to different ambient humidity levels ranging from 20% to 98% RH. The transmission power of TFBG has different linear behaviors for two different humidity ranges (20%-74% RH and 74%-98% RH), and the sensitivity for each humidity range reaches as high as 2.52 and 14.947 dBm/%RH, respectively. Combining the advantages of optical fiber grating and PVA as a smart material, this design involves simple configuration, low cost, compactness, a small degree of hysteresis, stability, and wide dynamic sensing range as well. Therefore, the sensor could be applied in real-time RH monitoring for normal as well as extremely humid environments.

Relative Humidity Sensor Based on Tilted Fiber Bragg Grating With Polyvinyl Alcohol Coating

Temperature-independent FBG pressure sensor with high sensitivity

An improved FBG-type sensor for simultaneous measurement of force (or displacement) and temperature based on the bilateral cantilever beam (BCB) is proposed and demonstrated. The two parts of the beam are subject to opposite forces (or displacements) leading to a red shift for the part of the FBG subject to stretch and to a blue shift for the other one. An FBG bonded to the surface of the middle of the BCB is experimentally demonstrated to have a force sensitivity of /spl sim/1.046 nm/N, a sensitivity of the displacement-based strain of /spl sim/0.317 nm/mm, and a temperature sensitivity of /spl sim/0.190 nm//spl deg/C between 0/spl deg/C and 70/spl deg/C, respectively.

FBG-type sensor for simultaneous measurement of force (or displacement) and temperature based on bilateral cantilever beam

A temperature insensitive fiber Bragg grating (FBG) liquid level sensor based on bending cantilever beam (BCB) is proposed and demonstrated. The BCB induces axial strain gradient along the sensing FBG, resulting in a Bragg bandwidth modulation. The broadening of FBG spectrum bandwidth and the reflection optical power change with the liquid level and they are insensitive to spatially uniform temperature variations. For a liquid level variation of 500 mm and a temperature range from 0/spl deg/C to 80/spl deg/C, the measured liquid level fluctuates less than 2% without any temperature compensation. By optical power detection via a pin photodiode, the liquid-level sensor avoids complex demodulation process and potentially costs low.

Qida Zhao

Papers

Relative Humidity Sensor Based on Tilted Fiber Bragg Grating With Polyvinyl Alcohol Coating

Temperature-independent FBG pressure sensor with high sensitivity

FBG-type sensor for simultaneous measurement of force (or displacement) and temperature based on bilateral cantilever beam

Temperature-insensitive fiber Bragg grating liquid-level sensor based on bending cantilever beam

Refractive index sensor based on measuring the transmission power of tilted fiber Bragg grating