Patent ID: 8175821

Claim:
A measurement system comprising: a sensor for physical quantity distribution (PQD sensor) comprising a body for converting physical quantity distribution (PQDc body) that has a base medium, at least six electrodes connected to the base medium, and wirings that connect the electrodes to an electric signal processing part; a processing part comprising the electric signal processing part and a computation processing part; and a measurement procedure and an estimation procedure that are executed in the processing part; said measurement system being characterized in that: the base medium is an electrically continuous conductive body and has an electric impedance distribution relative to direct current or alternating current, the PQDc body has a regional shape upon which an external force acts and has a structure wherein the condition of injection current flowing through the base medium changes according to a change in distribution of the external force or deformation by the external force, which is a physical quantity of interest, the electric signal processing part has the functions of: generating injection current for the base medium through the electrodes; measuring voltage values of electric potential distributions occurring in the PQDc by using the electrodes; and transmitting/receiving measurement data to/from the computation processing part, the measurement procedure issues commands to the electric signal processing unit to generate injection current using at least two of the electrodes, to generate at least six patterns of the injection current, and to measure as electric potential distribution data the voltage values occurring in the PQDc body due to the injection current by using at least four of the electrodes, and also processes all of the electric potential distribution data in the patterns into measurement data, and the estimation procedure reads the measurement data and performs an estimation calculation where the measurement data is used to obtain a distribution of the external force or deformation by the external force acting upon the PQDc body, which is the physical quantity of interest.