Sensor drift is the gradual change in a sensor’s output over time, even when the real physical condition has not changed. In robotics and other embedded systems, drift can come from temperature changes, aging components, wiring issues, or calibration loss. The result is less accurate measurements and a growing gap between what the system believes and what is actually happening.
In cyber security, sensor drift matters because many defenses and control systems trust sensor data to make decisions. If readings slowly become wrong, a robot may adjust its gait incorrectly, a safety system may miss an abnormal condition, or monitoring software may raise false alerts. Attackers may also benefit from drift by exploiting weak calibration, hiding changes inside noisy data, or causing operators to trust degraded telemetry. Common defenses include regular recalibration, plausibility checks, redundancy, and alarms for sustained deviation from expected values.