Printed Sensors for Smart Objects in Industry 4.0

With the advent of the fourth industrial revolution or Industry 4.0, manufacturing processes are undergoing radical changes thanks to the adoption of enabling technologies, such as Internet of Things (IoT), Big Data, Additive Manufacturing (AM), and Cloud Computing. As such, sensors are becoming essential to obtain additional data on production, parts, equipment health, and environmental conditions. All this concerns the aim of improving many aspects of industrial processes (flexibility, efficiency, cost, etc.). Sensors need to be placed everywhere in the industrial work environment (on machines, smart devices, objects, and tools) to monitor in real-time physical quantities such as temperature, vibrations, deformations that could affect production. With its characteristics, printed electronics (PE) can allow us the production of customized sensors and systems to make “smart” conventional objects. This work aims to analyze an innovative PE technology - aerosol printing - as manufacturing technology for electronics and sensors to be integrated into objects, showing examples of sensors fabricated by PE as applications that will be adopted for smart objects and Industry 4.0.