A pressure sensing system using fiber optic sensors and artificial neural networks

The fiber sensor testing system is shown in Fig. 2 (a). Sensors were placed in a hydraulic load machine and connected to the computer. Labview (a software tool) is employed to record the time domain response of sensors. As the machine stepped through various loads (ranging from 0 pounds to approximately 200psi) on the sensor, the output power of sensor is recorded, as shown in Fig. 2 (b). Clearly, the power decreases as the pressure increases, as we expected. The experimental results show the response of the sensor is extremely fast; which indicates a fiber optic sensor would be a very good candidate for pressure detection of objects in the space. The neural network modeling result is also shown in Fig. 2 (b), where the dotted line represents the measurement data from fiber optic sensors and the solid line represents the output generated by the ANN. From Fig. 2, we conclude that the ANN successfully models the relationship between the sensor output power and the applied pressure.