Microcontroller-based Monitoring of Pneumatic Systems.

Pneumatic linear actuators and grippers are widely used in the automotive, manufacturing and food packaging industries. Due to the problems associated with accurate position/stroke control these devices tend to be limited to fixed end position tasks such as pick and place operations. This paper considers the identification of the factors that may be of interest when approaching the monitoring of such systems. These have up to now included the number and type of sensors deployed, the nature of the computational resources needed and the operating variables considered. This research aims to demonstrate the efficacy of an approach in which microcontrollers have been deployed as part of an integrated process management system.