Wearable electronics is a rapidly growing field that recently started to introduce successful commercial products into the consumer electronics market. Employment of biopotential signals in wearable systems as either biofeedbacks or control commands are expected to revolutionize many technologies including point of care health monitoring systems, rehabilitation devices, human–computer/machine interfaces (HCI/HMIs), and brain–computer interfaces (BCIs). Since electrodes are regarded as a decisive part of such products, they have been studied for almost a decade now, resulting in the emergence of textile electrodes. This study presents a systematic review of wearable textile electrodes in physiological signal monitoring, with discussions on the manufacturing of conductive textiles, metrics to assess their performance as electrodes, and an investigation of their application in the acquisition of critical biopotential signals for routine monitoring, assessment, and exploitation of cardiac (electrocardiography, ECG), neural (electroencephalography, EEG), muscular (electromyography, EMG), and ocular (electrooculography, EOG) functions.

https://www.mdpi.com/2079-9292/8/5/479/pdf

Wearable and Flexible Textile Electrodes for Biopotential Signal Monitoring: A review

Electrodes fabricated on a flexible substrate are a revolutionary development in wearable health monitoring due to their lightweight, breathability, comfort, and flexibility to conform to the curvilinear body shape. Different metallic thin-film and plastic-based substrates lack comfort for long-term monitoring applications. However, the insulating nature of different polymer, fiber, and textile substrates requires the deposition of conductive materials to render interactive functionality to substrates. Besides, the high porosity and flexibility of fiber and textile substrates pose a great challenge for the homogenous deposition of active materials. Printing is an excellent process to produce a flexible conductive textile electrode for wearable health monitoring applications due to its low cost and scalability. This article critically reviews the current state of the art of different textile architectures as a substrate for the deposition of conductive nanomaterials. Furthermore, recent progress in various printing processes of nanomaterials, challenges of printing nanomaterials on textiles, and their health monitoring applications are described systematically.

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Nanomaterials-patterned flexible electrodes for wearable health monitoring: a review.

The implementation of haptic feedback utilizing a force sensory system in conjunction with a biologically inspired gripper system can improve human-robot collaboration for Reconfigurable Manufacturing Systems. Robot intelligence regarding haptics in manufacturing environments possesses the potential to improve production responses to on-demand production lines. The robotic gripper system was developed from the working principles of the Fin Ray Effect®. Adaptability of grasping and object geometric conformity was examined to determine the gripping characteristics of the end-effector. The actuation control through active haptic feedback of the gripper was investigated to determine grasping response and force signal regulation of object retention. The processing signal values through an Arduino® data acquisition system provided a characteristic curve of self-conformity properties of the gripper system. The study provided an experimental methodology of testing technical monitoring for force application and deformity study of flexible grippers of the same nature. The outcome from experimental techniques contributed to understanding geometric conformity for biologically inspired grippers for sensitive handling of fragile components and unsymmetrical geometries.

Geometric Conformity Study of a Fin Ray Gripper Utilizing Active Haptic Control

The tactile perception of fabric surface properties in the brain has always been a major research issue in the study of the contact comfort of fabrics. This study introduced the concept of PSC (per...

Brain signal changes of sensory cortex according to surface roughness of boneless corsets

Soft-robotic manipulators, with their closed-chamber elastomeric actuators, natural water-sealing and inherent compliance, are ideal for underwater applications for compact, lightweight, and dexterous manipulation tasks. However, their low structure rigidity makes soft robots highly prone to underwater disturbances, rendering traditional control methods unreliable, substantially increasing the challenges for high-dexterity control. To address this issue, we proposed an intuitive underwater hybrid manipulator system with a muscle-level mapping design concept. The manipulator was designed to construct an actuator-configuration which could directly map to the main muscles group in the human forearm. Exploiting this analogy, an electromyography-based wearable controller was developed using continuous bio-sensory data from the operator's arm to complement the intuitive manipulator control. A prototype of the proposed manipulator was constructed and validated in various experiments, where a human user could effectively use muscle activations to proportionally drive the soft-robotic manipulator in free-space motions, as well as performing object manipulation tasks both in air and underwater, only using visual feedback, with consistent performances under various time delays. The promising results of this work have demonstrated that the muscle-level analogy of soft robotics could lead to intuitive and effective underwater manipulation with simple structure and low control effort.

A Hybrid Underwater Manipulator System With Intuitive Muscle-Level sEMG Mapping Control

This paper presents the design and evaluation of a soft hand exo-sheath integrated with a soft fabric electromyography (EMG) sensor for rehabilitation and activities of daily living (ADL) assistance of stroke and spinal cord injury (SCI) patients. This wearable robot addresses the limitations of the soft robot gloves with design considerations in terms of ergonomics and clinical practice. Its features include: this exo-sheath is based on electric actuation and has been designed to be compact and portable. It reduces the shear force and avoids kinematic singularity comparing with tendon-driven soft gloves as their tendon routings are typically in parallel with individual fingers. Disparate from conventional robotic gloves, this design optimizes a bio-inspired fin-ray structure to enhance the hand proprioception as the palm is not covered by wearable structures. With a novel self-fastening finger clasp design, wearers can self-don/doff the exoskeleton device simplifying ADL assistance. To develop more intuitive control interface, a soft fabric EMG sensor has been developed to understand human intentions. The functionality of this soft robot has been demonstrated with experimental results using the low-level position control, kinematics evaluation and reliable EMG measurements.

Jeremy Fidock

Papers

A soft robotic exo-sheath using fabric EMG sensing for hand rehabilitation and assistance