Some people may still have a lingering fear of returning to high-rise buildings after the earthquake. The new sensor system can alleviate people's fears because it can optically measure the degree of rocking in a building so that it can measure its damage.
Some buildings have installed accelerometers on multiple floors to determine the extent to which these floors move from side to side. However, according to scientists, such systems are costly and processing data from these systems can be a complex and time consuming process.
With this in mind, the researchers created a so-called discrete diode position sensor.
During development, it consists of a laser mounted on a layer that illuminates the beam onto a rectangular photosensitive photodiode array on the underlying floor. As the building is shaken during an earthquake, the laser beam moves back and forth across the array, providing an electronic record of two floors moving laterally relative to each other. Once the earthquake is over, the centrally located authority can query the record of the wireless transmission to immediately determine if the building exceeds its maximum structural tolerance. If not, you can safely re-enter.
Discrete diode position sensors have been proven to provide accurate readings when performing shaker tests.