Sensor systems are becoming ubiquitous throughout society, yet their design, construction, and operation are still more of an art than a science. In this paper, we define, develop, and apply a formal se mantics for sensor systems that provides a theoretical framework for an integrated software architecture for modeling sensor-based con trol systems. Our goal is to develop a design framework that allows the user to model, analyze, and experiment with different versions of a sensor system. This includes the ability to build and modify multisensor systems and to monitor and debug both the output of the system and the effect of any modification in terms of robustness, efficiency, and error measures. The notion of Instrumented Logi cal Sensor Systems (ILSS) that are derived from this modeling and design methodology is introduced. The instrumented sensor ap proach is based on a sensori-computational model that defines the components of the sensor system in terms of theirfunctionality, accu racy, robustness, and efficiency. This approach provides a uniform specification language to define sensor systems as a composition of smaller, predefined components. From a software-engineering standpoint, this addresses the issues of modularity, reusability, and reliability for building complex systems. An example is given that compares vision and sonar techniques for the recovery of wall pose.
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