KAP JIN KIM, YU JIN AHN, SUN YOON Kyung Hee University, College of Engineering, Yongin-si, Gyeonggi-do, South Korea
Though during the last decade much attention has been paid to the development of smart clothing for real time vital sensing to monitor the wearer’s health conditions, a great commercial success is not achieved yet due to several important reasons.
One of the most important reasons is that polymer/textile-based sensors suitable for clothes have not been developed to measure ECG, heart beat rate, and respiration rate. In this study we have developed silver-plated nanofiber web as dry electrode to measure ECG and EMG and physiological sensing belt (PSB) made of a pair of elastic textile bands with a PDMS-coated PVDF film imbedded between them to measure respiration, heart pulse, and energy expenditure during walking, jogging, climbing, running, etc. The ECG and EMG signals measured using our developed dry electrodes were compared to those from the commercial Ag/AgCl gel electrodes. Pulse rate, respiration rate, and physical activity could be accessed simultaneously from the measurement of piezoelectric current signals generated from the deformation of the PSBs wrapped around finger, chest, and thigh, respectively. Thus, by wearing smart apparels with our developed sensors and appropriate electric circuit, the wearer’s wholelife health management will be possible in near future.
