Document Type
Article
Publication Date
4-2025
Publisher
John Wiley & Sons, Inc
Abstract
An integrated strain sensor system that has a unique response to a specific (set of) human movement(s) has the potential to impact various musculoskeletal health tracking applications akin to the step counter's impact on physical activity tracking. It is determined that an open circuit state of a sensor can be used as such a unique response. With this consideration, a digital strain sensor (DigSS) that exhibits a binary (i.e., ON/OFF) response when a threshold strain level is exceeded is developed. The channel geometry dependence of the corner flow in capillaric strain sensors (CSS) resulting in an electrofluidic switch is used. It is demonstrated that through the coalescence and breakup of a liquid meniscus, DigSS operates for hundreds of cycles with a strain limit of detection of 0.0026. To facilitate integration, a linear optimization-based computer-aided design tool for the integrated DigSS (iDigSS) is created. Experimental validation shows that the iDigSS distinguishes a target strain-field profile from 35 of 36 theoretically distinguishable profiles without requiring signal processing. Human subject trials demonstrate the system's ability to differentiate a specific shoulder movement from five others and to wirelessly record wrist extension counts and durations.
Recommended Citation
Gasvoda, H., Li, M., Pader, A., Altay, R., Cmager, N., Pandey, T., Tseng, T.-M., & Araci, I. E. (2025). Computer-Aided Design of Integrated Digital Strain Sensors for Hardware-Based Recognition and Quantification of Human Movements. Advanced Sensor Research, 4(4), 2400146. https://doi.org/10.1002/adsr.202400146
Comments
Open access to this article is funded by Santa Clara University Library.
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.