Fibre Bragg Grating Sensors and Instrumentation are now Off-the-shelf

For a few years, FBG-based transducers have been holding the attention of the OFS community. Today, some demonstrators and products leave labs to reach the market and industrial applications. FBG filter technology is now recognised as a strategic domain, due to the huge development of the telecommunication market, and this conjointly pushes the instrumentation sector. In 2000, about 40 % of the world OFS activities are linked to FBGs. Today, projects are more and more driven by industry due to increasing motivations for structure monitoring and health diagnosis, i.e. for measurement of strains, displacements, temperature ... Indeed, the economic impact (saving in maintenance costs, gains in safety...) of the concerned monitoring applications (concrete, basements, grounds, civil structures, composites materials...) justify the efforts which are devoted to them.