Load cells are widely used. All components of industrial production require load cells to monitor and feed data back to the control center in order to intervene in time when abnormal nodes occur and ensure the normal progress of industrial production. The new generation of advanced smart load cells will become a key factor in industrial automation.
load cells are an important part of automation equipment
load cell is an important part of automation equipment. Smart load cells can be applied to SmartCars, robots, etc., which can detect the conditions they sense, use artificial intelligence to recognize, and feed back the response system through the driving device. Since the first brand of manufacturing automation, Guangdong Topstar Technology entered the field of automation, it has applied a large number of smart load cells in industrial robots and manipulators, and has occupied the market with advanced technical strength. It is reported that with the development of the demand for robots, load cells The application on robots will become wider and wider, and the market space will become larger and larger. In turn, the technological progress of load cells will also promote the development of automation in a more intelligent direction.
In recent years, load cell technology has developed rapidly, and the technology has become more mature and perfect, which to a certain extent promotes the development of robotics. The innovation and progress of load cell technology is bound to bring innovation and progress to robots and other automation industries. Because many functions of robots are realized by load cells, this will promote more intelligent automation.
A new generation of advanced smart load cells will become the heart of industrial automation. “Smart factory” refers to the use of the Internet of Things technology and equipment monitoring technology to strengthen information management and services based on the digital factory, clearly grasp the production and sales process, improve the controllability of the production process, reduce manual intervention on the production line, and be correct in real time Collect production line data locally, as well as reasonable production planning and production schedules. Technologies that can be implemented in smart factories include weighing load cells such as wireless sensing, networking of control systems, and wireless industrial communications. Quickly and directly measure certain product quality indicators and control them online. The load cells integrated with intelligent technology will be able to solve the above-mentioned problems well.
Eight applications of wireless load cell networks
load cells are widely used. All components of industrial production need to be monitored by load cells, and the data is fed back to the control center in order to intervene in time when abnormal nodes occur and ensure the normal progress of industrial production.
(1) Application in the military field In the military field, due to the dense and random distribution of WSN (Wireless load cell Network), it is very suitable for use in harsh battlefield environments. WSN can be used to monitor the forces and equipment in the enemy’s area, monitor the battlefield conditions in real time, locate targets, and monitor nuclear or biochemical attacks.
(2) Auxiliary agricultural production WSN is particularly suitable for production and scientific research in the following areas. For example, monitoring of temperature, humidity and light in the greenhouse and soil, analysis and measurement of the growth law of precious cash crops, high-quality grape breeding and production, etc., can bring great help to rural development and farmers’ income. The use of WSN to build an automatic monitoring system for the agricultural environment, and a set of network equipment to complete data collection and environmental control of wind, light, water, electricity, heat and pesticides, can effectively improve the degree of agricultural intensive production and improve the scientific nature of agricultural production and planting .
(3) Ecological monitoring and disaster warning WSN can be widely used in ecological environment monitoring, biological population research, meteorological and geographic research, flood and fire monitoring. Environmental monitoring provides scientific decision-making basis for environmental protection and is the basis of ecological protection. Deploying WSN in the wild areas or areas that are not suitable for manual monitoring can carry out long-term unattended and uninterrupted monitoring, and provide real-time data for the protection and research of the ecological environment. Specific applications include: research on endangered populations by tracking the habitat and foraging habits of rare birds and other animals; arranging load cell nodes in areas along rivers to monitor water levels and water pollution at any time; in natural disasters such as mudslides and landslides Disaster warnings can be issued in advance for nodes in areas that are prone to occurrence, and corresponding anti-disaster measures can be taken in time; a large number of nodes can be deployed in key protected forest areas to monitor internal fire risks at any time. Once a fire is found, an alarm can be issued immediately and the specific location and The size of the current fire; nodes can be deployed in areas where earthquakes, floods and other disasters occur, remote mountainous areas, or remote wild areas for temporary emergency communications.
(4) The WSN technology of the infrastructure status monitoring system is a positive help for the safe construction of large-scale projects and the monitoring of the safety status of buildings. By arranging load cell nodes, it is possible to observe the conditions of buildings, bridges and other buildings in a timely and accurate manner, discover dangers in time, and perform repairs in time to avoid serious consequences.
(5) Application in the industrial field. In terms of industrial safety, load cell network technology can be used in dangerous working environments, such as arranging load cell nodes in coal mines, oil drilling, nuclear power plants, and assembly lines. It can monitor the safety status of the working environment at any time for the staff. The security of the company is guaranteed. In addition, load cell nodes can also replace some workers to perform tasks in dangerous environments, which not only reduces the degree of danger, but also improves the accuracy and speed of response to danger.
Due to the convenient deployment and flexible networking of WSN, it has gradually played a role in warehousing logistics management and smart home.
The wireless load cell network enables load cells to form a local Internet of Things, exchange and obtain information in real time, and finally converge to the Internet of Things, forming an important source of information and basic applications of the Internet of Things.
(6) Ensure safety and smooth flow in intelligent transportation. Intelligent transportation system (ITS) is a new type of transportation system developed on the basis of traditional transportation system. It integrates information, communication, control and computer technology and other modern communication technologies in transportation. Field, and organically combine “people-vehicles-roads-environment”. Adding a wireless load cell network technology to the existing transportation facilities will be able to fundamentally alleviate the problems of safety, smoothness, energy conservation and environmental protection that plague modern transportation, and at the same time improve transportation efficiency. Therefore, the application of wireless load cell network technology to intelligent transportation systems has become a research hotspot in recent years. The intelligent transportation system mainly includes several aspects such as the collection of traffic information, the transmission of traffic information, traffic control and guidance. The wireless load cell network can provide an effective means for the information collection and transmission of the intelligent transportation system, which is used to monitor the traffic flow, speed and other information in all directions of the road and the intersection. It is mainly composed of subsystems such as information acquisition and input, strategy control, output execution, and data transmission and communication among various subsystems. The information collection subsystem mainly collects vehicle and road information through load cells, and then the strategy control subsystem uses calculation methods to calculate the best plan according to the set goals, and at the same time outputs control signals to the executive subsystem to guide and control the vehicle. Pass, so as to achieve the preset goal. In intelligent transportation, wireless load cell networks can also be used in technical fields such as traffic information release, electronic toll collection, vehicle speed measurement, parking management, integrated information service platforms, intelligent public transportation and rail transit, traffic guidance systems, and integrated information platforms.
(7) In recent years, there have been many achievements in the medical system. Wireless load cell networks have been used in medical systems and health care. For example, monitoring various physiological data of the human body, tracking and monitoring the actions of doctors and patients in hospitals, and medicines in hospitals Management etc. If special-purpose load cell nodes are installed on hospitalized patients, such as heart rate and blood pressure monitoring equipment, doctors can know the condition of the monitored patient at any time, and can quickly rescue them when abnormal conditions are found. A study by the University of Rochester shows that these computers can even be used for medical research. Scientists use wireless load cells to create a “smart medical home”, a 5-room apartment house, where human research projects are used to test concepts and prototype products. The “Smart Medical Home” uses fine dust to measure the occupants’ important characteristics (blood pressure, pulse, and breathing), sleeping posture, and activity 24 hours a day. The collected data will be used for future medical research. By embedding network load cells in equipment such as shoes, furniture, and household appliances, it can help the family life of the elderly, seriously ill patients, and the disabled. The use of load cell networks can efficiently transmit necessary information to facilitate receiving care, and can reduce the burden on nursing staff and improve the quality of care. Using the load cell network to collect human physiological data for a long time can speed up the process of developing new drugs, and the micro-load cells installed on the monitored object will not cause too much inconvenience to people’s normal life. In addition, it also has novel and unique applications in many aspects such as drug management.
(8) Promote information appliance equipment to be more intelligent. The gradual popularity of wireless load cell networks has promoted the rapid development of information appliances and network technology. The main equipment of the home network has been expanded from a single machine to multiple appliances. Smart homes based on wireless load cell networks The network control node provides a basic platform for the connection of home and external networks and the connection of information appliances and equipment between internal networks.
Embedding load cell nodes in home appliances and connecting them to the Internet through a wireless network will provide people with a more comfortable, convenient and more user-friendly smart home environment. The remote monitoring system can be used to remotely control home appliances, and the security of the home can also be monitored at any time through image sensing equipment. The use of load cell networks can build smart kindergartens, monitor children’s early education environment, and track children’s activity trajectories.
The development trend of load cells
The industry generally believes that the heart of industrial automation is a new generation of advanced intelligent load cells, which allow the continuous operation of product production lines, and are connected to high-performance programmable logic controllers and human-machine interface systems through low-latency and real-time networks. Of course, for manufacturers, time is money. As long as the manufactured products can reach the required quality level, the production line will continue to run as quickly as possible, and the importance of smart load cells is highlighted.
At present, as the most influential and promising high-tech in the 21st century, smart load cells are attracting great attention from the electronic information circles at home and abroad. The Optoelectronics Industry Development Association predicts that the international market sales of smart load cells will grow at a high rate of 20% per year, and smart load cells will play a more important role in the era of industrial automation.
The changes brought by the Internet of Things technology to industrial automation. At present, industrial production is indeed transforming to automation on a large scale. However, with the continuous commercialization of the Internet of Things and cloud platform applications, the development of automation in the industrial field is upgrading to a higher level. The trend is intelligent production. So what are the trends in the development of load cells? (1) Miniaturization. Due to the rapid increase in the amount of information in the information age, load cells are required to be able to capture and process massive amounts of information. At the same time, the operational friendliness of the load cell system has also been put on the agenda, so load cells must be equipped with standard output modes. However, traditional large-volume and weak-function load cells are often difficult to meet the above requirements, so they have been gradually replaced by various types of high-performance micro-load cells. The latter is mainly composed of silicon material, which has the advantages of small size, light weight, fast response, high sensitivity and low cost. At present, miniature load cells have had a profound impact on signal detection systems in a large number of different application fields, such as aviation, long-distance detection, medical treatment and industrial automation. load cells are getting smaller and smaller and more powerful thanks to the rapid development of current computer technology, auxiliary design technology, integrated circuit technology, and microelectromechanical system (MEMS) technology.
(2) Intelligent. Intelligent load cells refer to those load cell systems equipped with microprocessors that can not only perform information processing and information storage, but also perform logical thinking and conclusion judgments. Intelligent load cell is another new load cell system involving multiple disciplines that appeared in the late 1980s. This type of load cell system, which has received widespread attention from the scientific research community immediately after its introduction, especially in detector applications, such as distributed real-time detection, network detection, and multi-signal detection, has been very popular and has a greater impact. It is foreseeable that emerging intelligent load cells will play an increasingly important role in all fields of human life.
(3) Multifunctionalization. As mentioned earlier, under normal circumstances, a load cell can only be used to detect one kind of physical quantity, but in many application fields, in order to be able to perfectly and accurately reflect the objective things and the environment, it is often necessary to measure a large number of physical quantities at the same time. The multifunctional load cell composed of several kinds of sensitive elements is a new generation detection system with small size and multiple functions. It can use different physical structures or chemical substances in sensitive elements and their different characterization methods. A single load cell system can realize the functions of multiple load cells at the same time. With the rapid development of load cell technology and microcomputer technology, it is now possible to produce integrated multi-functional load cells that assemble several types of sensitive components on the same material or on a single chip.
(4) Wireless networking. Wireless networks are not unfamiliar to us, such as mobile phones, wireless Internet access, and TV sets. load cells are not unfamiliar to us, such as temperature load cells. However, combining the two to put forward the concept of wireless load cell network has only happened in recent years. The load cell network integrates load cell technology, embedded computing technology, modern network and wireless communication technology, distributed information processing technology, etc. It can monitor, perceive and collect various environmental or monitored objects in real time through various integrated miniature load cells. information. The information is processed through the embedded system, and the sensed information is transmitted to the user terminal in a multi-hop relay mode through a random self-organizing wireless communication network. So as to truly realize the concept of “ubiquitous computing”.
