Tabor Jordan, Agcayazi Talha, Fleming Aaron, Thompson Brendan, Kapoor Ashish, Liu Ming, Lee Michael, Huang He Helen, Bozkurt Alper, Ghosh Tushar
The Department of Textile Engineering, Chemistry, and Science. at NC State University, Raleigh, NC, USA.
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. at NC State University.
IEEE Sens J. 2021 Apr;21(7):9413-9422. doi: 10.1109/jsen.2021.3053434. Epub 2021 Jan 21.
Amputees are prone to experiencing discomfort when wearing their prosthetic devices. As the amputee population grows this becomes a more prevalent and pressing concern. There is a need for new prosthetic technologies to construct more comfortable and well-fitted liners and sockets. One of the well-recognized impediments to the development of new prosthetic technology is the lack of practical inner socket sensors to monitor the inner socket environment (ISE), or the region between the residual limb and the socket. Here we present a capacitive pressure sensor fabricated through a simple, and scalable sewing process using commercially available conductive yarns and textile materials. This fully-textile sensor provides a soft, flexible, and comfortable sensing system for monitoring the ISE. We provide details of our low-power sensor system capable of high-speed data collection from up to four sensor arrays. Additionally, we demonstrate two custom set-ups to test and validate the textile-based sensors in a simulated prosthetic environment. Finally, we utilize the textile-based sensors to study the ISE of a bilateral transtibial amputee. Results indicate that the textile-based sensors provide a promising potential for seamlessly monitoring the ISE.
截肢者在佩戴假肢装置时容易感到不适。随着截肢者数量的增加，这一问题变得更加普遍和紧迫。需要新的假肢技术来制造更舒适、贴合度更好的内衬和接受腔。新假肢技术发展中一个公认的障碍是缺乏实用的内置接受腔传感器来监测接受腔内环境（ISE），即残肢与接受腔之间的区域。在此，我们展示了一种通过简单且可扩展的缝纫工艺制造的电容式压力传感器，该工艺使用市售的导电纱线和纺织材料。这种全纺织传感器为监测ISE提供了一个柔软、灵活且舒适的传感系统。我们详细介绍了我们的低功耗传感器系统，该系统能够从多达四个传感器阵列进行高速数据采集。此外，我们展示了两种定制装置，用于在模拟假肢环境中测试和验证基于纺织品的传感器。最后，我们利用基于纺织品的传感器研究双侧胫骨截肢者的ISE。结果表明，基于纺织品的传感器在无缝监测ISE方面具有广阔的潜力。
