Development of a smart fabric force-sensing glove for physiotherapeutic Applications

Abstract

In this work, a low-priced smart fabric forcesensing glove is developed which is able to measure the total amount and direction of the force a person applies on a patient in a physiotherapeutic context. A device like this would be beneficial for the education of physiotherapists, to measure the progress of a patient and to evaluate the treatment. The proposed device uses a new sensor, which is based on a piezoresistive fabric. This fabric changes its electrical resistance according to the applied stress. The characterization of this sensor revealed that the change in resistance of the sensor is dependent of the amount of force, the loaded area, the total time the sensor is loaded and hysteresis. To compensate these behaviours, an additional sensor based on the same smart fabric was developed which measures the loaded area of the first sensor. By combining these two sensors, it is possible to calculate the applied force. The results show the feasibility to build a measurement system out of smart fabric material that can measure the applied force. Furthermore, the prototype shows promising results in determining the applied force in amount and direction.

Keywords

• smart fabric
• physiotherapy
• force sensor
• sensor glove