Smart motors show some good sense

The rise of Industry 4.0 and smart production lines means sensors are increasingly being used in all areas of manufacturing.

These sensors can provide engineers with exhaustive details on the health and operation of their production lines.

But installing huge numbers of sensors on machinery and equipment can add considerable costs to an operation. A fault with a single sensor on the line can also lead to production downtime and financial losses.

To this end, Prof Matthias Nienhaus, a drive systems specialist at Saarland University in Germany, and his colleagues are developing smart motors that do not need external sensors. Instead the motors themselves act as sensors, allowing them to monitor whether they are running smoothly and detect any faults.

The motors are also capable of communicating and interacting with each other. In this way they could be used to form a network of smart motors, linked by an operating system, and capable of monitoring the entire production line.