Body segment position reconstruction and posture classification by smart textiles

Abstract

Textile-based transducers are an innovative category of devices that use conductive fibres meshed with elastic textile fabrics. Within this paper, a new class of strain sensors, which represents an excellent trade-off between figures of merit in mechano-electrical transduction and possibility of integration in textiles, is presented. Electrically conductive elastomer composites show piezo-resistive properties when a deformation is applied. Conductive elastomer can be applied to fabric or to other flexible substrate and they can be employed as strain sensors. We integrated conductive elastomer sensors into fabrics to realize wearable kinaesthetic garments able to detect posture and movement of a user. This paper deals with the design, the development and realization of a set of sensing garments, from the characterization of innovative textile-based sensors to the methodologies employed to gather information on the posture and movement from the entire garments. Data deriving from the prototypes are analysed and compared with those deriving from a traditional movement tracking system. The realized kinaesthetic garments have shown very promising performance in terms of body segment position reconstruction and posture classification.