From Smart to Intelligent Sensors: A Case Study

This paper showcases the opportunity of embedding intelligence in smart sensor devices with particular reference to air quality monitoring applications. The work bases upon recent findings attained and published by authors in the field of information extraction from measurements signals and smart sensor research. Smart sensors are commonly conceived as hardware/software transducers able to lift the source physical signal(s) to the application target level. This entails an intricate twist of physical measurements and application-level bits of information. When measures are noisy or ambiguous, information extraction is demanding and thus requires artificial intelligence to intervene in the data interpretation process. Experience gained with handcrafted prototypes allowed us to harness the complexity of bringing artificial intelligence inside physical measurements. To provide a complete picture of the encountered criticalities, the chosen semantic model, the carried out and the obtained results are reported and discussed. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]