12-740 Data Acquisition

Fall 2021

  • Time: Tuesday/Thursday 11:50 AM - 1:10 PM
  • Location: Virtual
  • Instructor: Mario Bergés
  • Office Hours: Wednesdays 2:00 PM - 3:00 PM
  • Teaching Assistant: Pengkun Liu
  • Office Hours: TBD
  • Graders: TBD

In recent times, there has been a considerable increase in the number of sensors and actuators being embedded in the environment, electronic devices, and throughout all the infrastructure that supports modern human life. All this instrumentation allows today’s practitioners to push the boundaries of traditional design, operation and management in a variety of ways, including faster and more precise measurement and control. For civil engineering, for example, these technologies provide incredible opportunities to increase the precision and/or automate existing measurement processes (e.g., laser scanning technologies vs. theodolites), as well as to measure phenomena that were previously very difficult or impossible to measure (e.g., real-time measurements of strains in structural elements). In particular, they open up new territories in the space of solutions for combatting climate change and social/economic inequality, as well as for improving urban sustainability.

This course intends to introduce the student to a variety of subjects that are required to make proper use of modern sensors and Internet of Things (IoT) devices. These topics include physical principles of sensors, data acquisition, signal processing and engineering measurements. The course will cover both theory and practice, as a considerable portion of the grade is based on a final project in which the student should implement a simple instrumentation system and visualize the measurements on a graphical user interface. To this end, the course makes use of hardware for quick prototyping and assumes some familiarity with computer programming.

The course is intended to be a introductory course, as the time limitations prohibit us from exploring any one topic in detail. Should you find yourself interested in building an expertise in instrumentation, this course should prepare you well for a full-semester graduate course on the topic.