Smart transducer

As sensors and actuators become more complex they provide support for various modes of operation and interfacing. Some applications require additionally fault-tolerance and distributed computing. Such high-level functionality can be achieved by adding an embedded microcontroller to the classical sensor/actuator, which increases the ability to cope with complexity at a fair price. This integration of an analog or digital sensor or actuator, a processing unit, and a communication interface is referred to as smart transducer.

In the machine vision field, a single compact unit which combines the imaging functions and the complete image processing functions is often called a smart sensor.