A system may include a dial wheel having a first magnet located at a first orbital position of the dial wheel and a second magnet located at a second orbital position of the dial wheel. A polarity of the first magnet at a surface of the dial wheel is opposite a polarity of the second magnet at the surface of the dial wheel. A sensor board includes a first magnetic sensor for sensing a magnetic field and is configured so that the first and second magnets cause the first magnetic sensor to generate an output pulse for each rotation of the dial wheel. The pulsed output is indicative of a volume of resource consumed.

Provided is an encoder that can sense an abnormality in the attitude of a detector with respect to a scale. An encoder includes a scale and a detector, the scale being provided on one measurement target part with marks arranged on the scale, and the detector being provided on another measurement target part and configured to detect an amount of relative movement with the scale. The scale includes a sensing unit that senses the attitude of the detector with respect to the scale, and thus even in a case where an abnormality in the attitude of the detector with respect to the scale cannot be sensed on the basis of a change in a signal read by a reading unit, the abnormality can nevertheless be sensed.

A failure determination device for an angle detector for a rotating machine, including: an angle detector, which includes n pole pairs (n>m), and outputs sine and cosine wave-signals in accordance with a rotational position of a rotating machine including a multi-phase winding and m pole pairs (m2); and a failure determiner for detecting failure of the detector based on signals from the detector. The detector outputs first and second sine-wave-signals having 180 phases different, and first and second cosine-wave-signals having 180 phases different. The failure determiner determines malfunction of the detector when the failure is determined with use of at least one of: failure determination using a sum of the first and second sine-wave-signals and a sum of the first and second cosine-wave-signals; or failure determination using a sum of squares or a square root of a sum of squares of the sine-wave-signal and the cosine-wave-signal.

A linear position detecting device applied to a linear motion system for motion measurement is provided. The linear position detecting device comprises a coding element and a detecting element corresponding to the coding element for retrieving the signal of the coding element to provide the position information. The coding element comprises a base, a first coding unit and a second coding unit wherein the base comprises an axial direction parallel to a length of the base, and a radial direction perpendicular to the axial direction. The first coding unit is configured on the base and comprises a plurality of first tracks extended along the axial direction and alternately arranged along the radial direction. The second coding unit is configured on the base and adjacent to the first coding unit, and comprises a plurality of second tracks wherein the second tracks are extended along the radial direction and alternately arranged along the axial direction.

A magnetic position sensor for determining the angular position of a magnet on a rotatable component, comprising: at least one magnetic sensor for determining different vector components of a magnetic field of the magnet; a memory having a look-up table stored therein that is populated with data representative of different angular positions of the magnet, the data representative of each angular position being correlated with data in the look-up table that is representative of the vector components that would be detected by the at least one magnetic sensor at that angular position; wherein the magnetic position sensor is configured to use the vector components determined by the magnetic sensor and logic to determine the angular position of the magnet from the look-up table.

A magnetic sensor may include one or more sensor components to detect a system-level error, associated with a sensor system that includes the magnetic sensor, based on a set of signal characteristics of a waveform corresponding to a magnetic field present at the magnetic sensor. The one or more sensor components may provide an indication of the system-level error in an output signal.

According to an embodiment, an encoder system includes an encoder and an interface. The encoder detects the position and speed of a motor, and generates A-, B- and Z-phase signals. The interface includes an AB waveform recognition circuitry to recognize a waveform of an AB phase, a Z waveform recognition circuitry to recognize a period of an enable state of a Z phase, a starting point storage device to store a value of the AB phase when the Z phase changes and stores an AB-phase change pattern, a starting point recognition circuitry to generate an interrupt signal, and a rotation angle counter to start a new count of the rotation angle of the motor.

The disclosure provides a position detection system and a method for detecting a movement of a machine. The position detection system comprises a first position sensor configured to detect a magnetic field that forms magnet pole pairs arranged in a row, magnet poles of different polarity being arranged next to one another in each case, a second position sensor configured to detect a magnetic field at an individual magnet arranged in a center of the magnet pole pairs and at a distance from each magnet pole; and an evaluation device configured to evaluate detection results of the first and second position sensors that have been detected based on a movement of an element of the machine relative to the first and second position sensors, the evaluation including identifying a fault based on the detection results of the first and second position sensors.

Systems and methods for processing sensor information obtained from a coding wheel of a motor may detect defects in the sensor information caused by contamination or damage of any of the angular step markers, index marker, and/or blank space on the tracks of the coding wheel. A step counter counts toward an overflow value representing the number of angular step markers on the coding wheel. The step counter and the index are correlated: when the overflow value is reached, if the index marker is not detected an error is raised; coincidently, when the index marker is detected, if the step counter has not reached the overflow value an error is raised. The systems and methods may be applied to bidirectionally rotating motors and other devices by detecting a change in rotational direction and switching from incrementing the angular step counter to decrementing it, and vice versa.

To improve production efficiency while maintaining stability of an operation of a robot arm. A dust position determination unit determines whether there is a read error based on a read result of a detection head of an encoder. In a case where the dust position determination unit determines that there is a read error, an error determination unit judges in which region, among an allowable region and a non-allowable region, the read error occurs. In a case where the read error is judged to occur in the allowable region, the error determination unit continues an operation of the robot arm.