The terms IoT and Industry 4.0 are promising increasingly sophisticated solutions, but the realisation will depend on the inclusion of robust and reliable sensors. If the gathered data is flawed or inaccurate the performance of the whole system will be compromised. By reviewing research on robustness indicators, mechatronics and sensor properties as well as listing mechanical noise factors and providing an electromechanical trade-off example, the paper highlights the importance of considering both mechanical and electrical noise factors and robustness in early development of connected devices.

It is generally accepted in industry and academia that trade-offs between functional design objectives are an inevitable factor in the development of mechanical systems. These trade-offs can have a large influence on the achievable robustness and performance of the final design, with many products only functioning in narrow sweet-spots between different objectives. As a result, the design process of multi- functional products can be prolonged when designers concurrently attempt to find sweet-spots between a number of potentially interdependent trade-offs. This paper will show that designers only have six different approaches available when attempting to manage a trade-off while trying to ensure robustness and a sufficient performance. These fall within one of three categories; accept, optimise, or redesign. Selecting the wrong approach, can result in consequences downstream which can be difficult to predict, amongst others a lack of robustness to geometric variation, constrained performance, and long development lead time. This points to a substantial potential in the synthesis of design methods that support the identification and management of trade-offs in early product development.