Development of an automatic inspection system for the LAF sensor

Abstract

Nowadays the amount of automobiles and motorcycles is fast expanding, which results in the increment of emission and fuel consumption. To deal with these problems, it always installs oxygen sensor at the outlet of engine. Oxygen sensor can detect the content of exhaust gas, and transmits the information to ECU to control the fuel injection so that fuel consumption as well as air pollution can be reduced. With the increasing price of gasoline, usage of the Lean Air-Fuel (LAF) engine is greatly increased, which leads to the demand of the LAF sensor. The difference between LAF sensor with traditional oxygen sensor is that LAF sensor can be used to determine higher air-fuel ratio. Therefore, it is applicable for LAF engine. The cooperative company of this research has developed the prototype of LAF sensor. In order to increase production and to ensure quality, they need an automated inspection system to replace their manual inspection operations. The research firstly studied the function of the sensor and the manual inspection process in the company. Next, we improved the process and designed the automatic mechanisms. The main result was the development of an automatic inspection system which can automatically test the sensor and classify its quality.