Considerable research and development efforts have been devoted to fuel cell operation and systems. In particular, in the area of polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) fuel cells for mobile and stationary applications. This paper discusses the advances needed for sensor and actuator technology to improve and accelerate fuel cell development.

Fuel Cell humidification is challenging because of associated nonlinearites and sensititvities to process operating conditions. High Frequency Resistance is a proven and widely used offline lab diagnostic technique to measure fuel cell resistance. Resistance is impacted by cell contact resistance (function of stack compression), temperature and MEA hydration state. One of the challenges for online identification of fuel cell hydration is to develop a systematic system identification methodology that can discriminate HFR component due to MEA hydration in presence of contact resistance and varying temperature.

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