Highly elastic capacitive pressure sensor based on smart textiles for full-range human motion monitoring

Human motion analysis has become an important clinical step for collecting data in the healthcare field. However, the typical movement monitorings have to be faced with many different challenges about tools, reliability, and working range of sensors for applications at different positions on the human body. To fulfill this aim, the design and fabrication of a multi-purpose capacitive pressure textile sensor for wearable electronics applications are presented. Because of the high elasticity of the dielectric layer of spacer fabric, the capacitive pressure sensor exhibits a very fast recovery time (7 ms) and high cycling stability (> 20,000). Besides, the stacking structure of the electrode layers (SWCNT/Silver paste) due to excellent durability even under large deformations (grasping, bending, stretching), and breathable for the skin in applications. As the practical demonstrations, the pressure sensors are embedded into a textile glove for grasp motion monitoring, and smart socks for walking gait analysis during activities of daily living. More importantly, an adaptive fuzzy-neuro network algorithm has been developed and adapted in order to increase the accuracy of the gait monitoring system under actual and realistic wearing test conditions. (C) 2020 Published by Elsevier B.V.