Medicine, a flexible knitted sensor to monitor knee

2023-05-30 16:30:01

A knitted wearable designed for continuous knee joint monitoring that combines data acquisition with user comfort. The device was developed by a team formed by researchers from the University of Technology and Design (Sutd) of Singapore, in collaboration with SingHealth Polyclinics (Singapore). The work has been published in ‘Advanced Healthcare Materials’. “Most existing approaches require conductive fabric to be attached externally to users’ clothing or other non-conductive objects through manual techniques such as sewing or heat welding. This fully knitted wearable sensor aims to Monitor joint health in comfort.”

To arrive at the end result, the team stopped trying to add conductive fabric to existing garments and instead “knit the device from scratch as a single fabric, using an industrial knitting machine with computer control. These machines,” they recall. researchers – are analogous to multi-material 3D printers, in fact they can seamlessly integrate multiple yarns in various patterns and dot densities into a single three-dimensional fabric”. The device was then connected to an Arduino Nano 33 Ble Sense technology board and was shown to be able to accurately track movements through leg extension and flexion, while walking, jogging and climbing stairs.