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and Speed
Industrial Automation, EE-403
Spring 2014
Objectives
• Know different methods of displacement
measurement.
• construction and characteristics of LVDT.
• principles of operation of inductive and capacitive
types of proximity sensors.
• Distinguish between variable distance and variable
area type of capacitance displacement sensors.
• principle of operation of a optical type displacement
sensor.
• noncontact type speed sensing and their principles of
operation.
What to Measure?
• For example, we might measure fluid flow in a
pipe with a flow-meter, or we could measure
the flow indirectly by seeing how long it takes
for the fluid to fill a known-sized container.
• The choice would be dictated by system
requirements, cost, and reliability.
POSITION SENSORS
• Position sensors report the physical position
of an object with respect to a reference point.
The information can be linear, as in how many
inches a robot arm has extended, or an angle,
as in how many degrees a radar dish has
turned.
Potentiometers
• A potentiometer (pot) can be used to convert rotary or
linear displacement to a voltage. Actually, the pot itself
gives resistance, but this resistance value can easily be
converted to a voltage.
• Pots used for position sensors are the same in principle
as a standard “volume-control,” but there is a
difference.
– A pot used to measure angular position has linear
taper, which means the resistance changes linearly
with shaft rotation.
– A pot used for a volume control may have audio
taper, which means the resistance changes in a
nonlinear fashion to match the human perception
of “getting louder.”
Potentiometers
• The pot just described is the single-turn type, which actually has only
about 350° of useful range. A single-turn pot may have “stops” at each
end of its travel. Obviously, such a pot could only be used where the
rotation never exceeds 350°. A single- turn pot without stops has a small
“dead zone” when the wiper crosses the end of the resistor. Multi-turn
pots are available with a wiper that moves in a helix motion, allowing for
up to 25 or more revolutions of the shaft from stop to stop.
• A pot is supplied with 10 V and is set at 82°. The range of
this single-turn pot is 350°. Calculate the output voltage.
Linear Variable Differential Transformer - LVDT
• Its construction is
similar to that of LVDT,
except the core is
designed in such a way
that when it rotates the
mutual inductance
between the primary
and each of the
secondary coils changes
linearly with the
angular displacement
Measurement of Rotary motion: Resolver
• A resolver consists of a rotor
containing a primary coil and
two stator windings (with equal
number of turns) placed
perpendicular to each other.
• The rotor is directly attached to
the object whose rotation is
being measured.
• By measuring these two voltages
the angular position can be
uniquely determined.
• Phase sensitive detection is
needed if we want to measure
for angles in all the four
quadrants.
Capacitance Sensors
• C = Ɛ . A/ d
• A capacitance sensor can be formed by
either varying
– the separation (d)
– the area (A)
– the permittivity (Ɛ)
• A displacement type sensor is
normally based on the first two
(variable distance and variable
area) principles, while the
variable permittivity principle is
used for measurement of humidity,
level
• The measuring circuits for
capacitance sensors are normally
capacitive bridge type
Capacitance Proximity Detector
• Capacitive proximity detectors are
small in size, noncontact type and
can detect presence of metallic or
insulating objects in the range of
approximately 0-5cm.
• The measuring Head of proximity
detector consists of two
electrodes, one circular (B) and
the other an annular shaped one
(A); separated by a small di-
electrical spacing.
• Capacitance between the plates A
and B would change when the
target comes in the closed vicinity
of the sensor head.
Angular Velocity Sensors
Question
An optical type speed sensor has a disc with 36 rectangular
holes placed at regular intervals on the periphery of the disc.
The frequency of the photo-detector output is 360 Hz. Find the
speed of the shaft in rpm on which the disc is mounted.
Speed Sensor with Variable Reluctance
• another scheme for
speed measurement. It
is a variable reluctance
type speed sensor
• A wheel with projected
teethes made of a
ferromagnetic material
is mounted on the shaft
whose speed is to be
measured
EXAMPLE 6.5
The robot arm illustrated in Figure 6.7 rotates 120° stop-to-stop and uses a pot
as the position sensor. The controller is an 8-bit digital system and needs to
know the actual position of the arm to within 0.5°.
Determine if the setup shown in Figure 6.7 will do the job?
Solution
The controller is an 8-bit digital system and needs to know the actual
position of the arm to within 0.5°.
• To have 0.5° resolution means that the entire 120° will be divided into 240
increments, each increment being 0.5°.
• An 8-bit number has 255 levels (from 00000000 to 11111111), so it has
more than enough to do the job. (That’s good!)
• The pot is supplied with 5 V. Therefore, the output of the pot would be 5V
for the maximum pot angle of 350° (if it could rotate that far).
• Notice that the reference voltage of the ADC is also set at 5 V For the pot
voltage (Vpot) of 5 V, the digital output would be 255 (11111111bin).
• A single-turn pot has a range of
350°, but the robot arm only
rotates 120°,
• the 2 : 1 gear ratio between the
pot and the arm. With this
arrangement, the pot rotates
240° when the arm rotates 120°.
• By doubling the operating range
of the pot, the linearity and
resolution errors (from the pot)
are reduced by half.
• Consider the case when the robot
arm is at 10° Because of the 2 : 1
gear ratio, the pot would be at
20°.
• the pot voltage at 20°, we use the
transfer function of the pot (5 V
/350°) is 0.29 V. This 0.29 V is
then converted into binary with
the ADC.
• To calculate the binary output,
first form the ADC transfer
function
• Now calculate the ADC binary
output using the 0.29 V (pot
voltage) as the input
• We now turn our attention to the system resolution, which
is the smallest measurable change.
• In a digital system, this usually corresponds to the value
assigned to the LSB (you can’t change half a bit!).
• We can find the resolution by calculating the pot angle
corresponding to a single binary state. This is done
• by multiplying the transfer functions of each of the system
elements together