SBIR Phase I: Prototype Non-Contacting Piston Position Sensors for Fluid Power Actuators

The broader impact/commercial potential of this project includes the development and demonstration of a prototype position sensor that will help convert hydraulic and pneumatic actuators into ?smart? devices. The position sensor will enable built-in self-diagnostics, precise feedback control, energy efficient operation, faster industrial manufacturing and material handling processes, and safer operations on mobile vehicles that take locations of obstacles and danger zones automatically into account during motion. The value proposition of the new sensor comes from its lower cost, ease of installation, and its non-contacting operation. This project will help a start-up company demonstrate the performance of its sensor on multiple actuator products provided by large industrial and off-road mobile companies. This is expected to result in establishing the viability of the sensor, customer orders for the sensor, and growth in company revenues. The technology area addressed by the research in this project is smart sensors and the targeted market sector is industrial machines and off-road agriculture and construction vehicles. This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project will develop a prototype position sensor that is production-ready and ready for field testing in real-world industrial and mobile vehicle applications. The sensor utilizes a large-distance magnetic field model, redundant magnetic sensors on a single sensor board and adaptive estimation algorithms to provide a novel position sensor that is small, non-intrusive, non-contacting, easy to install and lower cost compared to other position sensors on the market. The innovations in the sensor technology being developed include the use of a nonlinear estimation algorithm that avoids differentiation of complex nonlinear functions, provides more accuracy and is computationally efficient for implementation on a microprocessor. The sensor also includes an auto-calibration algorithm that corrects for sensor location and orientation errors so as to ensure accurate performance with changing cylinders. The research project will demonstrate the performance of the sensor prototype in the lab on multiple actuators provided by collaborating large industrial and off-road vehicle companies.