Top 10 Sensors In IoT And Robotics

Hello! Welcome to this blog. In this blog, we are going to talk about the top 10 sensors that we can use in IoT and robotics. 

As a beginner, you may be a little curious about the things that are in electronics and may also be concerned about how to get into these things. If yes then this blog is for you friend! 

So, before we start discussing these things, let me tell you what is the sensor? I believe you may have heard this word before. As the name suggests, the sensor is used to interpret analog values such as temperature, humidity, light intensity, and more. The sensor is designed to sense these things and convert these signals into digital signals. 

Although these things have been used in industries for a long time, it became more famous when words like Smart City and IoT came into the picture. 

Furthermore, in IoT, a network of sensors collects all real-time information and passes it to their respective receptors, they are also called nodes. Use of sensors has made IoT and smart city concepts much easier. 

Mostly Used Sensors In IoT And Robotics Sectors 

As discussed earlier, both these fields of IoT and Robotics are becoming very famous in today's world. As it is becoming more popular in the world, the demand for different types of sensors is also increasing.

The more accurate the sensor, the more accurate the output. 

Talking about robotics, there can be a ton of sensors that work to gather data on which the robot can work. In this blog, we will discuss some of them.

I know this is a very large list but yes, these are the sensors that robots and IoT systems use to navigate and collect data and that is why these sensors are popular in robotics and IoT. 

Apart from the above list, there are a lot more sensors available in the robotics and IoT field but for this tutorial, we have selected only these sensors to fulfil the purpose of this blog. 

Hereafter I will explain all these above sensors one by one. 

Line Follower Sensor In IoT

This sensor is famous in both IoT and robotics fields. If you want to design a robot that moves an object from one place to another without human intervention then using this sensor can be really useful for you. 

Talking about its working, it has a receiver and a transmitter. The transmitter is for transmitting signals and the receiver is designed to receive those transmitted signals. 

These sensors act like a robot's eye and guide it.  

These sensors are found to be really helpful in the design of the line follower robot. 

Ultrasonic Sensors In Robotics

If you are running a warehouse and want to automate some things like box carrying robots. If yes then it can be the sensor which you can use as the first sensor in your project. 

Unlike the line sensor, this sensor also has a transmitter and receiver. The only difference is the ultrasonic sensor uses ultrasonic waves for object detection while the line sensor uses a light source. 

In addition, it can also be helpful in building DIY radar systems and understanding the actual function of radar. 

LDR Module In IoT

LDR is nothing but a resistor. The resistance(ohm) of LDR varies according to changes in light intensity. 

Now you may be wondering where can we use this sensor? The answer to your question is below. 

As I said earlier, the resistance of this sensor changes according to changes in light intensity. You can use this sensor in solar systems.  

As we know that the position of the Sun keeps changing and if we keep our solar panel stable it will not capture the maximum amount of light. Therefore, to overcome this issue, we can design a system that can track high light intensity areas and rotate solar panels in that area. In this way, the solar panel will be able to absorb a large amount of light from the sun. 

And we can make this possible by making use of LDR (Light dependent sensor). 

TDR Module In IoT

Taking the name of the camera module, the first thing that comes to your mind is Selfie, but apart from this, the camera module is also used in projects such as object detection, drone photography and more. 

In IoT and robotics, the use of cameras is very common. The camera module helps IoT devices to understand the surrounding environment.  

In addition, the camera module also used in a home surveillance system, face recognition system and many more applications. 

Voltage sensor / Current Sensor 

Vibration sensors are used to measure mechanical oscillation produced by the machine. 

These sensors are widely used in mechanical industries, in food & beverage, mining, metalworking, gas & oil, paper industry etc 

Load Sensor In Robotics

Do you want to design a weighing machine? Then this is the sensor that you can use in your application. 

The load sensor consists of a Wheatstone bridge that uses two fixed value resistors and two variable resistors. Whereby the resistance of the variable resistor changes according to the change in stress applied to it. 

Load sensors are used in designing of Electronic weighing machines.

Fingerprint Sensor In Robotics

Nowadays we can see this sensor in almost all smartphones. This sensor uses camera modules to obtain fingerprints and store them in their memory. 

These sensors are used in designing of Electronic door locks, attendance systems etc. 

Turbidity Sensor In IoT

It is an optical sensor that uses LEDs and some phototransistors. 

Turbidity sensors measure the turbidity of freshwater or seawater samples at NTU (Nephelometric Turbidity Units) 

We can see this sensor mainly used in washing machines, dishwashers, to measure turbid water density.

Conclusion

In this way, we have learned about the top 10 sensors that can be used in the IoT and robotics fields. If there is any doubt, feel free to ask me in the comment section. 

In our next blog, we will learn how to interface an LSA08 line sensor with the Arduino board.