Recently, Mr. Gong Lingsong, Head of China Business of Sensor Business Unit of TE Connectivity (hereinafter referred to as "TE"), accepted an exclusive interview with TechNode, sharing how TE's intelligent sensing is deeply integrated with AI technology to support the construction of smart city infrastructure, as well as his practices and insights in smart elderly care and smart home.
Intelligent sensors: the underlying foundation for the development of the artificial intelligence industry
Headquartered in Switzerland, TE is a global leader in sensing and connectivity, committed to providing advanced, efficient and high-performance products and solutions for industrial applications, transportation, data communications, healthcare and energy industries.
In the AI era, TE's sensors are the underlying hardware for capturing and acquiring data, providing AI with diverse and high-volume data to meet the needs of subsequent precise analysis, and forming the underlying foundation for the development of the artificial intelligence industry.
Currently, TE's sensors are widely used in 12 industry sectors, including HVAC, predictive maintenance, instrumentation, robotics/collaborative robots, precision motion control, and semiconductor equipment. Many intelligent factories have adopted TE's sensors.
Intelligent factories need to ensure that the entire production lifecycle is monitored and controlled automatically. Instrumentation is responsible for monitoring all data in the production process. This data is collected, transmitted, processed, and fed back, thereby driving the automated production process to proceed in an orderly and efficient manner. Therefore, instrumentation is an important support for industrial automation and intelligence.
The diverse array of robots in factories also relies heavily on sensors. Sensors endow robots with multiple perceptual abilities, such as vision, touch, and hearing. They not only provide robots with external perception capabilities but also detect the robot's internal working status. By detecting information such as the position, speed, temperature, load, and voltage of each joint, they effectively ensure and improve the robot's operation and sensitivity.
With the development of Industry 4.0, the use of robots and the adoption of automation and control systems in factory workshops have become important ways to improve production efficiency and profitability. The increasing demand for industrial robot automation means that sensing technology will continue to be a crucial foundation for data collection.
Taking TE's safety torque sensors as an example: TE's safety torque sensors monitor the mechanical torque at various rotating pivot points on collaborative robots. Based on integrated MEMS load cells, the torque sensors convert mechanical torque into a digital output signal proportional to the applied torque. These torque sensors are installed within collaborative robots to detect situations where excessive torque values in collaborative applications could cause personal injury or damage to the robot itself.
In robotics applications, the shift from power-limited systems to torque sensors is driven by the advantages they offer. Torque sensors reduce response time and improve accuracy, thereby enhancing the safety and reliability of robotic systems and improving the safety of human-robot collaboration.
Intelligent sensing and edge computing empower the Internet of Things world of smart cities
In traditional Internet of Things (IoT), the intelligence of the entire IoT depends entirely on the data center, while edge devices only have basic functions such as data collection, transmission, and final command execution. This mechanism places a heavy burden on the data center, and if the data center's network communication is interrupted, delayed, or unstable, the entire IoT system may malfunction.
In edge computing, edge devices also possess intelligence. For example, the device's temperature sensor no longer needs to continuously transmit temperature readings to the data center. Instead, it can determine the temperature situation on its own and only contact the data center after a significant change in the reading, or directly determine the action to be taken at this time. Even if the network is temporarily interrupted, it will not affect the normal operation of the entire system.
Currently, TE sensor products have a wide range of applications in enabling smart cities, smart healthcare, industrial IoT, and intelligent manufacturing.
In smart city infrastructure applications, TE sensing technology has been applied to devices such as smart gas meters, smart pipeline monitoring, and smart building pressure monitoring systems; in the smart home field, it has spurred innovative applications of full-scenario smart sleep.
In urban infrastructure, sensing technology plays a vital role in monitoring underground pipe networks. Urban underground pipe networks encompass several major categories, including water supply, drainage (rainwater and sewage), gas (coal gas, natural gas, and liquefied petroleum gas), electricity, heating, and industrial pipelines. They are the foundation upon which cities depend for survival and are often referred to as the "lifeline" of cities.
In recent years, there have been news reports of deaths and injuries caused by explosions of urban heating pipelines. The explosions have also caused severe losses such as road collapses, heating outages, traffic paralysis, and vehicle damage.
Deploying sensors on various pipeline networks can transmit monitoring data to a smart pipeline network IoT platform for analysis, management, monitoring, and early warning. By applying TE low-frequency, high-sensitivity vibration sensors, minute cracks can be accurately detected, providing the heating department with accurate and effective data to enable early detection of problems and prevent them from occurring.
The Internet of Things (IoT) is also changing future home life. TE sensor technology is being applied to the home IoT to create a comfortable space that automatically monitors sleep health and proactively adjusts the sleep environment. In future smart sleep scenarios using TE sensors, sleep-inducing fragrances will be released before bedtime, and smart speakers will play soothing music to create a conducive sleep atmosphere. After falling asleep, a smart pillow can monitor sleep status, linking with the air conditioner to adjust airflow and suitable temperature and humidity, while a smart mattress will adjust sleeping posture in real time. Upon waking, sleep data reports can be provided to the user.
Intelligent sensing empowers health management, creating smart healthcare in cities.
In smart cities, healthcare is a key indicator of residents’ sense of security and well-being. It can provide smarter and more humane innovative solutions for an aging society, helping more and more seniors enjoy a more convenient, safer, and more dignified high-quality life in their later years.
To address the issue of nighttime risk management for the elderly, TE has applied highly sensitive piezoelectric film sensing technology to smart mattresses. Without disturbing the user, it continuously and accurately identifies vital signs such as respiratory rate and heart rate, as well as parameters such as body movement and getting out of bed. This data can be uploaded to a cloud data center to help seniors create personalized sleep feedback and suggestions, providing crucial information for reliable and scientific nighttime risk management and the development of healthy aging plans. Simultaneously, the data collected by the sensors also provides strong support for predictive data models of more than ten common risk behaviors or diseases, including nocturia and cardiovascular diseases. The system can issue timely warnings as needed, allowing family members and medical staff to monitor the health and safety of the elderly in real time.
In the rapidly developing field of telemedicine, emerging technologies such as 5G and the Internet of Things are being widely applied. Mr. Gong Lingsong pointed out, "The starting point and foundation of innovative applications based on 5G is the accurate capture of high-quality data, which requires the assistance of sensing technology." He envisioned a future smart healthcare scenario: "Telemedicine requires the very fast real-time signals of 5G transmission. In addition, it also needs various types of data. We can integrate sensors into home-use medical devices to sample data. For example, we can add blood oxygen sensors to home devices to monitor blood oxygen levels, as well as various parameters such as blood sugar and heart rate. We hope that sensors can contribute to telemedicine and other new application trends."
As a global industry technology company, the Chinese market has always been one of TE's most important strategic markets. As of fiscal year 2020, TE had nearly 80,000 employees worldwide, including more than 18,000 employees and over a dozen production facilities in China.
"TE has consistently adhered to localization for over 30 years since entering the Chinese market," said Mr. Gong Lingsong. TE's sensor division has production bases in Suzhou, Shenzhen, and Chengdu.
Facing the intelligent future, TE is focusing on developing a new generation of intelligent sensors to support edge intelligence and build a solid foundation for the construction of smart cities in China.
