Introduction to

Embedded Systems

Edward A. Lee
UC Berkeley
EECS 149/249A
Fall 2016

© 2008-2016: E. A. Lee, A. L. Sangiovanni-Vincentelli, S. A. Seshia.

All rights reserved.

Chapter 7: Sensors and Actuators

What is a sensor? An actuator?

A sensor is a device that measures a physical quantity

→ Input / “Read from physical world”

An actuator is a device that modifies a physical quantity

→ Output / “Write to physical world”

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Sensors and Actuators – The Bridge between the
Cyber and the Physical
Actuators:
 Motor controllers
Sensors:  Solenoids
 Cameras  LEDs, lasers
 Accelerometers  LCD and plasma displays
 Gyroscopes  Loudspeakers
 Switches
 Strain gauges
 Valves
 Microphones  …
 Magnetometers
 Radar/Lidar Modeling Issues:
 Chemical sensors  Physical dynamics
 Pressure sensors  Noise
 Bias
 Switches
 Sampling
 …  Interactions
 Faults
 … EECS 149/249A, UC Berkeley: 3
 Self-Driving Cars

Berkeley PATH Project Demo,

1999, San Diego.

Google self-driving car 2.0

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Kingvale Blower
Berkeley PATH Project, March, 2005

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Sensor-Rich Cars

Source: Analog Devices

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Sensor-Rich Cars

Source: Wired Magazine

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Kingvale Blower: Technology Overview
Berkeley PATH Project, March, 2003

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Magnetometers
A very common type is the Hall
Effect magnetometer.

Charge particles (electrons, 1)

flow through a conductor (2)
serving as a Hall sensor.
Magnets (3) induce a magnetic
field (4) that causes the
charged particles to
accumulate on one side of the
Hall sensor, inducing a
measurable voltage difference
from top to bottom.

The four drawings at the right

illustrate electron paths under
different current and magnetic
field polarities. Image source: Wikipedia Commons

Edwin Hall discovered this effect in 1879.

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Aliasing

Sampled data is
vulnerable to aliasing,
where high frequency
components A high frequency sinusoid sampled at a low rate looks
masquerade as low just like a low frequency sinusoid.
frequency
components.

Careful modeling of
the signal sources
and analog signal
Digitally sampled images are vulnerable to aliasing as
conditioning or digital well, where patterns and edges appear as a side effect of
oversampling are the sampling. Optical blurring of the image prior to
necessary to counter sampling avoids aliasing, since blurring is spatial low-
the effect. pass filtering.

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Roadmap

❑ How Accelerometers work

❑ Affine Model of Sensors

❑ Bias and Sensitivity

❑ Faults in Sensors

❑ Brief Overview of Actuators

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 The most common design measures the distance
Accelerometers between a plate fixed to the platform and one
attached by a spring and damper. The measurement
is typically done by measuring capacitance.

Uses:
 Navigation

 Orientation

 Drop detection

 Image stabilization

 Airbag systems

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Spring-Mass-Damper Accelerometer

By Newton’s second law,

F=ma.

For example, F could be the

Earth’s gravitational force.

The force is balanced by the

restoring force of the spring.

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 Spring-Mass-Damper System

Exercise: Convert to an integral equation with initial conditions.

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Measuring tilt

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 Feedback dramatically improves accuracy and
dynamic range of microaccelerometers.
V/F
The Berkeley Sensor and
Actuator Center (BSAC)
created the first silicon
microaccelerometers, MEMS
devices now used in airbag
systems, computer games, Digital

disk drives (drop sensors), etc. T

+
-

M. A. Lemkin, “Micro Accelerometer

Design with Digital Feedback Control”,
Ph.D. dissertation, EECS, University of
California, Berkeley, Fall 1997
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Difficulties Using Accelerometers

 Separating tilt from acceleration

 Vibration
 Nonlinearities in the spring or damper
 Integrating twice to get position: Drift

Position is the integral of

velocity, which is the integral
of acceleration. Bias in the
measurement of acceleration
causes position estimate
error to increase quadraticly.

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 Measuring Changes in Orientation:
Gyroscopes

Optical gyros: Leverage the Sagnac effect, where a laser light is sent
around a loop in opposite directions and the interference is measured.
When the loop is rotating, the distance the light travels in one direction is
smaller than the distance in the other. This shows up as a change in the
interference.

Images from the Wikipedia Commons EECS 149/249A, UC Berkeley: 18

 Dead reckoning
Inertial Navigation Systems
plus GPS.

Combinations of:
 GPS (for initialization and periodic correction).
 Three axis gyroscope measures orientation.
 Three axis accelerometer, double integrated for
position after correction for orientation.

Typical drift for systems used in aircraft have to be:

 0.6 nautical miles per hour
 tenths of a degree per hour

Good enough? It depends on the application!

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Design Issues with Sensors
 Calibration
⚫ Relating measurements to the physical phenomenon
⚫ Can dramatically increase manufacturing costs
 Nonlinearity
⚫ Measurements may not be proportional to physical phenomenon
⚫ Correction may be required
⚫ Feedback can be used to keep operating point in the linear region
 Sampling
⚫ Aliasing
⚫ Missed events
 Noise
⚫ Analog signal conditioning
⚫ Digital filtering
⚫ Introduces latency
 Failures
⚫ Redundancy (sensor fusion problem)
⚫ Attacks (e.g. Stuxnet attack)
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Sensor Calibration

Affine Sensor Model

Bias and Sensitivity

Example: Look at ADXL330 accelerometer datasheet

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Analog Devices ADXL330 Data Sheet

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Design Issues with Sensors
 Calibration
⚫ Relating measurements to the physical phenomenon
⚫ Can dramatically increase manufacturing costs
 Nonlinearity
⚫ Measurements may not be proportional to physical phenomenon
⚫ Correction may be required
⚫ Feedback can be used to keep operating point in the linear region
 Sampling
⚫ Aliasing
⚫ Missed events
 Noise
⚫ Digital filtering
⚫ Introduces latency
 Failures
⚫ Redundancy (sensor fusion problem)
⚫ Attacks (e.g. Stuxnet attack)
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Faults in Sensors

Sensors are physical devices

Like all physical devices, they suffer wear and tear, and
can have manufacturing defects

Cannot assume that all sensors on a system will work

correctly at all times

Solution: Use redundancy

→ However, must be careful how you use it!
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 Violent Pitching of Qantas Flight 72 (VH-QPA)

An Airbus A330 en-route from Singapore to Perth on 7

October 2008
• Started pitching violently, unrestrained passengers hit
the ceiling, 12 serious injuries, so counts it as an
accident.
• Three Angle Of Attack (AOA)
sensors, one on left (#1),
two on right (#2, #3) of nose.
• Have to deal with inaccuracies,
different positions, gusts/spikes,
failures.

[Rushby, 2002] EECS 149/249A, UC Berkeley: 27

 How to deal with Sensor Errors

Difficult Problem, still research to be done

Possible approach: Intelligent sensor communicates an

interval, not a point value
• Width of interval indicates confidence, health of sensor

[Rushby, 2002] EECS 149/249A, UC Berkeley: 29

 Sensor Fusion: Marzullo’s Algorithm

❑ Axiom: if sensor is non-faulty, its interval contains the true

value
❑ Observation: true value must be in overlap of non-faulty
intervals
❑ Consensus (fused) Interval to tolerate f faults in n:
Choose interval that contains all overlaps of n − f; i.e., from
least value contained in n − f intervals to largest value
contained in n − f

[Rushby, 2002]
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 Example: Four sensors, at most one faulty
S1

S2

S3

S4
Probable value

• Interval reports range of possible values.

• Of S1 and S4, one must be faulty.
• Of S3 and S4, one must be faulty.
• Therefore, S4 is faulty.
• Sound estimate is the overlap of the remaining three.

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 Example: Four sensors, at most one faulty
S1

S2

S3

S4
??

??

• Suppose S4’s reading moves to the left

• Which interval should we pick?

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 Example: Four sensors, at most one faulty
S1

S2

S3

S4

consensus

• Marzullo’s algorithm picks the smallest interval that is

sure to contain the true value, under the assumption
that at most one sensor failed.
• But this yields big discontinuities. Jumps!

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 Schmid and Schossmaier’s Fusion Method

❑ Recall: n sensors, at most f faulty

❑ Choose interval from f+1st largest lower bound to f+1st

smallest upper bound

❑ Optimal among selections that satisfy continuity

conditions.

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 Example: Four sensors, at most one faulty
S1

S2

S3

S4

consensus

• Assuming at most one faulty, Schmid and

Schossmaier’s method choose the interval between:
• Second largest lower bound
• Second smallest upper bound
• This preserves continuity, but not soundness
[Rushby, 2002] EECS 149/249A, UC Berkeley: 35
Motor Controllers

Bionic hand from Touch Bionics

costs $18,500, has and five DC
motors, can grab a paper cup
without crushing it, and turn a key
in a lock. It is controlled by nerve
impulses of the user’s arm,
combined with autonomous
control to adapt to the shape of
whatever it is grasping. Source:
IEEE Spectrum, Oct. 2007.

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Pulse-Width
Modulation (PWM)

Delivering power to
actuators can be
challenging. If the
device tolerates rapid
on-off controls (“bang-
bang” control), then
delivering power
becomes much easier.

Duty cycle around 10%

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Model of a Motor
Back electromagnetic
force constant

Electrical Model: Angular velocity

Mechanical Model (angular version of Newton’s second

law):

Moment of Torque Friction Load

inertia constant torque
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Summary for Lecture

❑ Overview of Sensors and Actuators

❑ How Accelerometers work

❑ Affine Model of Sensors

❑ Bias and Sensitivity

❑ Faults in Sensors

❑ Brief Overview of Actuators

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References

John Rushby, “Formal Verification of Marzullo’s Sensor

Fusion Interval,” CSL Technical Report, January 2002,
SRI International, Menlo Park, CA.

http://www.csl.sri.com/users/rushby/papers/sensors.pdf

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