Wearable kinesthetic systems for capturing and classifying body posture and gesture

Monitoring body kinematics has fundamental relevance in several biological and technical disciplines. In particular the possibility to know the posture exactly may furnish a main aid in rehabilitation topics. This paper deals with the design, the development and the realization of sensing garments, from the characterization of innovative comfortable and spreadable sensors to the methodologies employed to gather information on posture and movement. In the present work an upper limb kinesthetic garment (ULKG), which allows to reconstruct shoulder, elbow and wrist movements and a kinesthetic glove able to detect posture an gesture of the hand are presented. Sensors are directly integrated in Lycra fabrics by using conductive elastomer (CE) sensors. CE sensors show piezoresistive properties when a deformation is applied and they can be integrated onto fabric or other flexible substrate to be employed as strain sensors