Development of Capacitive Wearable Patches and Bands for Data Fusion in Complex Physical Activities

We present on the design of wearable multi-sensor patches for tracking posture, limb movements and general biomedical health. The sensor patch incorporates textile-based capacitive sensor elements to capture critical information on the strength, frequency and duration between specific episodes of movements in the arms, legs and torso. Also embedded into the capacitive patches and bands are compact off-the-shelf heart-rate, blood oxygenation, temperature, humidity, accelerometer, impact and vibrational sensors integrated on a wireless (BLE) microcontroller platform. Based on the captured signal characteristics and sequences, complex activities and body movements can be tracked, which can be used to monitor user activity, training performance, and biomedical health. The capacitive elements consist of stretchable textiles, embroidered patterns and nanocomposites of elastomers (PDMS/PVDF) in layered arrangements for maximum sensitivity and ductility. The magnitude and temporal changes in the sensor arrays can be converted into the recognizable activities and actionable intelligence on general health parameters. Hence the proposed wearable patches with integrated arrays of sensors will allow us to pursue compact, cost-effective, power-efficient solutions in the emerging era of sensor fusion for performance monitoring, worker training, high-risk patients.