Session Synopsis

The conference highlights the ubiquity of sensors in everyday products, industrial processes, and specialist research applications. This can often be attributed to the transferability of sensor systems between applications. In recent years this has been facilitated by factors such as the rapid expansion of IoT and mobile electronics. Systems can often be tested in lab conditions, which are consistent with many indoor applications.


However, the sometimes considerable technical and logistical challenges of translating lab-based
prototypes to practical trials and real-world measurement are underestimated or overlooked by the research community. These challenges are acute in cases where sensors are deployed in extreme or demanding environments. This could include severe conditions that impose constraints on the sensor’s design or require innovation to be able achieve measurement; sensors applied under conditions that are uncontrollable, inaccessible, or inhospitable to measurement or electronic prototypes in general; or where the sensor system, other assets, or human operators are exposed to risks or hazards.

This special session aims to redress the balance in the research community by offering a forum to examine research on the design, deployment and application of sensing technologies out-of-the-lab in extreme or demanding environments. Authors will be encouraged to submit to the session original research, new sensors designs or implementation, and case studies of sensor application.

Examples include but are not limited to the following:

  • Sensing in difficult, inhospitable or extreme natural environments.
  • Sensing in dangerous environments, e.g. where the sensor supports or mitigates harm to people or property.
  • Sensing in controlled environments where the sensor system is at risk of damage or destruction, e.g., explosive atmospheres.
  • Sub-merged or airborne sensing imposing unique design requirements on sensors.
  • Measurement under extremes of temperature, pressure, noise, radioactivity, corrosive media, etc.
  • Measurement of difficult to handle work- or test- pieces in manufacturing or metrology.