A Concept for Self-Configuration of Adaptive Sensor and Information Fusion Systems

Currently, new research questions arise because of the paradigms of Industry 4.0, which aims to bring together mechatronic systems and information technologies. Its general idea is to create an Internet of Things consisting of communicating machines, which implement concepts for self-configuration, -diagnosis, and -optimisation. The realisation of these functionalities is in focus of current research and gains in importance not only in the industrial sector. The overall goal is to equip technical systems with intelligence to enable for autonomous behaviour. Therefore, tasks like information processing, extensive networking, or system monitoring using sensor and information fusion systems have to be reconsidered. This contribution focuses on the design and maintenance of sensor and information fusion systems and presents a preliminary evaluation of a design concept for such applications. The concept is developed to automatically configure sensor and information fusion systems, which is a time-consuming and complex task when carried out manually. It reduces the perceived complexity of the application and supports the designer during design and maintenance of the sensor and information fusion system.