Methodology, Microfabrication and Applications of Advanced Sensing and Smart Systems

A special issue of Micromachines (ISSN 2072-666X). This special issue belongs to the section "E:Engineering and Technology".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 May 2024) | Viewed by 15613

Special Issue Editors


E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
School of Mechanical Engineering, Southeast University, Nanjing, China
Interests: intelligent manufacturing; data fusion; machine vision; quality control

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
School of Mechanical Engineering, Southeast University, Nanjing, China
Interests: parallel robotics; bio-inspired robot; robot optimization design and control

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Smart sensing and advanced systems play an important role today, especially the application of sensing in the IoT and with the aid of artificial intelligence. There are plenty of sensor methodologies for various applications, such as in industrial areas, chemical areas, robotics, and sustainable systems. The methodologies contain piezoelectric, piezoresisitve, triboelectric, magnetic, optics, ions, and chemiresisitve. With the help of sensors in all kinds of applications, intelligent process and manufacturing technologies have been on the receiving end of significant research efforts from numerous research groups across the world, which have enabled machine learning algorithms and enhanced calculated performance and multisensor-based intelligent process control systems, such as smart homes, smart factory, decision support system, robotics, etc. 

This Special Issue seeks to showcase research papers and review articles in this field and welcomes contributions devoted to the micro/nanofabrication, methodology, integration, and application of artificial intelligence and smart sensors and advanced industrial process systems, with a particular interest in multisensor fusion, machine vision technologies, digital twin technologies, the human–machine interface, virtual reality, machine learning, big data, advanced robotics, and other applications. Topics of interest include but are not limited to: 

  • All kinds of advanced sensing methodologies;
  • The fabrication and materials in sensors;
  • Machine learning and multisensor-based industrial process technology;
  • Machine-vision-based industrial defect detection;
  • Artificial-intelligence-assisted industrial process failure prediction;
  • Digital twin application in industrial advanced technology;
  • Robotics and intelligent manufacturing application;
  • Innovative human–machine interaction for intelligent manufacturing.

Dr. Jianxiong Zhu
Prof. Dr. Zhisheng Zhang
Dr. Haiying Wen
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Micromachines is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • artificial intelligence
  • smart sensor
  • multisensor fusion
  • machine vision
  • digital twin
  • intelligent manufacturing
  • advanced robotics

Benefits of Publishing in a Special Issue

  • Ease of navigation: Grouping papers by topic helps scholars navigate broad scope journals more efficiently.
  • Greater discoverability: Special Issues support the reach and impact of scientific research. Articles in Special Issues are more discoverable and cited more frequently.
  • Expansion of research network: Special Issues facilitate connections among authors, fostering scientific collaborations.
  • External promotion: Articles in Special Issues are often promoted through the journal's social media, increasing their visibility.
  • e-Book format: Special Issues with more than 10 articles can be published as dedicated e-books, ensuring wide and rapid dissemination.

Further information on MDPI's Special Issue polices can be found here.

Published Papers (7 papers)

Order results
Result details
Select all
Export citation of selected articles as:

Editorial

Jump to: Research

3 pages, 163 KiB  
Editorial
Editorial for the Special Issue on Methodology, Microfabrication and Applications of Advanced Sensing and Smart Systems
by Luyu Jia, Shanling Ji, Yuze Gao, Haiying Wen and Jianxiong Zhu
Micromachines 2024, 15(9), 1149; https://doi.org/10.3390/mi15091149 - 13 Sep 2024
Viewed by 458
Abstract
Smart sensing and advanced systems have played crucial roles in the modern industrialization of society, which has led to many sensors being used in fabrication methodologies for various applications, such as in medical equipment [...] Full article

Research

Jump to: Editorial

12 pages, 3759 KiB  
Article
A Saturation Artifacts Inpainting Method Based on Two-Stage GAN for Fluorescence Microscope Images
by Jihong Liu, Fei Gao, Lvheng Zhang and Haixu Yang
Micromachines 2024, 15(7), 928; https://doi.org/10.3390/mi15070928 - 20 Jul 2024
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 721
Abstract
Fluorescence microscopic images of cells contain a large number of morphological features that are used as an unbiased source of quantitative information about cell status, through which researchers can extract quantitative information about cells and study the biological phenomena of cells through statistical [...] Read more.
Fluorescence microscopic images of cells contain a large number of morphological features that are used as an unbiased source of quantitative information about cell status, through which researchers can extract quantitative information about cells and study the biological phenomena of cells through statistical and analytical analysis. As an important research object of phenotypic analysis, images have a great influence on the research results. Saturation artifacts present in the image result in a loss of grayscale information that does not reveal the true value of fluorescence intensity. From the perspective of data post-processing, we propose a two-stage cell image recovery model based on a generative adversarial network to solve the problem of phenotypic feature loss caused by saturation artifacts. The model is capable of restoring large areas of missing phenotypic features. In the experiment, we adopt the strategy of progressive restoration to improve the robustness of the training effect and add the contextual attention structure to enhance the stability of the restoration effect. We hope to use deep learning methods to mitigate the effects of saturation artifacts to reveal how chemical, genetic, and environmental factors affect cell state, providing an effective tool for studying the field of biological variability and improving image quality in analysis. Full article
Show Figures

Figure 1

18 pages, 4135 KiB  
Article
An Intelligent Non-Invasive Blood Pressure Monitoring System Based on a Novel Polyvinylidene Fluoride Piezoelectric Thin Film
by Shilin Li, Taoyun Zhou, Muzhou Liu, Qiaomei Zhao and Yi Liu
Micromachines 2024, 15(5), 659; https://doi.org/10.3390/mi15050659 - 17 May 2024
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 1060
Abstract
Hypertension is a common cause of cardiovascular diseases, closely associated with the high mortality and disability rates of cardiovascular diseases such as stroke and coronary heart disease. Therefore, developing a comfortable and sustainable device for monitoring human pulse signals holds practical significance for [...] Read more.
Hypertension is a common cause of cardiovascular diseases, closely associated with the high mortality and disability rates of cardiovascular diseases such as stroke and coronary heart disease. Therefore, developing a comfortable and sustainable device for monitoring human pulse signals holds practical significance for the prevention and treatment of hypertension and cardiovascular diseases. PVDF flexible pressure sensors possess the characteristics of high sensitivity, good flexibility, and strong biocompatibility, thereby demonstrating extensive application potential in areas such as health monitoring, wearable devices, and electronic skins. This paper focuses on the development of a modified piezoelectric polymer and its application in an intelligent blood pressure monitoring system, demonstrating its outstanding performance and feasibility through a series of experiments. This research provides innovative material choices for the development of intelligent medical devices and offers beneficial guidance for the design and application of future intelligent health monitoring systems. Full article
Show Figures

Figure 1

15 pages, 4706 KiB  
Article
Experimental Investigation of Vibration Isolator for Large Aperture Electromagnetic MEMS Micromirror
by Lei Qian, Yameng Shan, Junduo Wang, Haoxiang Li, Kewei Wang, Huijun Yu, Peng Zhou and Wenjiang Shen
Micromachines 2023, 14(8), 1490; https://doi.org/10.3390/mi14081490 - 25 Jul 2023
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 1534
Abstract
The Micro-Electro-Mechanical-System (MEMS) micromirror has shown great advantages in Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) for autonomous vehicles. The equipment on vehicles is usually exposed to environmental vibration that may degrade or even destroy the flexure of the micromirror for its delicate structure. In [...] Read more.
The Micro-Electro-Mechanical-System (MEMS) micromirror has shown great advantages in Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) for autonomous vehicles. The equipment on vehicles is usually exposed to environmental vibration that may degrade or even destroy the flexure of the micromirror for its delicate structure. In this work, a mechanical low-pass filter (LPF) acting as a vibration isolator for a micromirror is proposed. The research starts with the evaluation of vibration influences on the micromirror by theoretical calculation and simulation. The results illustrate that mechanical load concentrates at the slow flexure of the micromirror as it is excited to resonate in second-order mode (named piston mode) in Z-direction vibration. A specific LPF for the micromirror is designed to attenuate the response to high-frequency vibration, especially around piston mode. The material of the LPF is a beryllium-copper alloy, chosen for its outstanding properties of elasticity, ductility, and fatigue resistance. To measure the mechanical load on the micromirror in practical, the on-chip piezoresistive sensor is utilized and a relevant test setup is built to validate the effect of the LPF. Micromirrors with or without the LPF are both tested under 10 g vibration in the Z-direction. The sensor output of the device with the LPF is 35.9 mV in piston mode, while the device without the LPF is 70.42 mV. The attenuation ratio is 0.51. This result demonstrates that the LPF structure can effectively reduce the stress caused by piston mode vibration. Full article
Show Figures

Figure 1

13 pages, 2819 KiB  
Article
Self-Attention-Augmented Generative Adversarial Networks for Data-Driven Modeling of Nanoscale Coating Manufacturing
by Shanling Ji, Jianxiong Zhu, Yuan Yang, Hui Zhang, Zhihao Zhang, Zhijie Xia and Zhisheng Zhang
Micromachines 2022, 13(6), 847; https://doi.org/10.3390/mi13060847 - 29 May 2022
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 2279
Abstract
Nanoscale coating manufacturing (NCM) process modeling is an important way to monitor and modulate coating quality. The multivariable prediction of coated film and the data augmentation of the NCM process are two common issues in smart factories. However, there has not been an [...] Read more.
Nanoscale coating manufacturing (NCM) process modeling is an important way to monitor and modulate coating quality. The multivariable prediction of coated film and the data augmentation of the NCM process are two common issues in smart factories. However, there has not been an artificial intelligence model to solve these two problems simultaneously. Focusing on the two problems, a novel auxiliary regression using a self-attention-augmented generative adversarial network (AR-SAGAN) is proposed in this paper. This model deals with the problem of NCM process modeling with three steps. First, the AR-SAGAN structure was established and composed of a generator, feature extractor, discriminator, and regressor. Second, the nanoscale coating quality was estimated by putting online control parameters into the feature extractor and regressor. Third, the control parameters in the recipes were generated using preset parameters and target quality. Finally, the proposed method was verified by the experiments of a solar cell antireflection coating dataset, the results of which showed that our method performs excellently for both multivariable quality prediction and data augmentation. The mean squared error of the predicted thickness was about 1.6~2.1 nm, which is lower than other traditional methods. Full article
Show Figures

Figure 1

14 pages, 2402 KiB  
Article
Measuring Liquid Droplet Size in Two-Phase Nozzle Flow Employing Numerical and Experimental Analyses
by Lin Jiang, Wei Rao, Lei Deng, Atilla Incecik, Grzegorz Królczyk and Zhixiong Li
Micromachines 2022, 13(5), 684; https://doi.org/10.3390/mi13050684 - 27 Apr 2022
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1861
Abstract
The flavoring process ensures the quality of cigarettes by endowing them with special tastes. In this process, the flavoring liquid is atomized into particles by a nozzle and mixed with the tobacco in a rotating drum. The particle size of the flavoring liquid [...] Read more.
The flavoring process ensures the quality of cigarettes by endowing them with special tastes. In this process, the flavoring liquid is atomized into particles by a nozzle and mixed with the tobacco in a rotating drum. The particle size of the flavoring liquid has great influence on the atomization effect; however, limited research has addressed the quantitation of the liquid particle size in two-phase nozzle flow. To bridge this research gap, the authors of this study employed numerical and experimental techniques to explore the quantitative analysis of particle size. First, a simulation model for the flavoring nozzle was established to investigate the atomization effect under different ejection pressures. Then, an experimental test is carried out to compare the test results with the simulation results. Lastly, the influencing factors of liquid particle size in two-phase nozzle flow were analyzed to quantify particle size. The analysis results demonstrated that there was a cubic correction relationship between the simulation and experiment particle size. The findings of this study may provide a reliable reference when evaluating the atomization effect of flavoring nozzles. Full article
Show Figures

Figure 1

25 pages, 7400 KiB  
Article
Kinetic Walking Energy Harvester Design for a Wearable Bowden Cable-Actuated Exoskeleton Robot
by Yunde Shi, Mingqiu Guo, Heran Zhong, Xiaoqiang Ji, Dan Xia, Xiang Luo and Yuan Yang
Micromachines 2022, 13(4), 571; https://doi.org/10.3390/mi13040571 - 3 Apr 2022
Cited by 10 | Viewed by 6137
Abstract
Over the past few decades, wearable exoskeletons of various forms have been developed to assist human activities or for rehabilitation of movement disorders. However, sustainable exoskeletons with efficient energy harvesting devices still have not been fully explored. In this paper, we propose the [...] Read more.
Over the past few decades, wearable exoskeletons of various forms have been developed to assist human activities or for rehabilitation of movement disorders. However, sustainable exoskeletons with efficient energy harvesting devices still have not been fully explored. In this paper, we propose the design of a lightweight wearable Bowden-cable-actuated soft exoskeleton robot with energy harvesting capability. Unlike previous wearable exoskeletons, the presented exoskeleton uses an electromagnetic generator to both harvest biomechanical energy and to output mechanical torque by controlling an operation mode relay switch based on a human’s gait. Moreover, the energy-harvesting module also acts as a knee impact absorber for the human, where the effective damping level can be modulated in a controlled manner. The harvested energy is regulated and stored in super capacitors for powering wireless sensory devices when needed. The experimental results show an average of a 7.91% reduction in thigh muscle activity, with a maximum of 3.2 W of electric power being generated during movement downstairs. The proposed design offers important prospects for the realization of lightweight wearable exoskeletons with improved efficiency and long-term sustainability. Full article
Show Figures

Figure 1

Back to TopTop