Wearable integrated piezoelectric film sensor with tensioning, bending, shearing and twisting detection functions for human motion recognition (original) (raw)

Human motion recognition using flexible/stretchable wearable sensors holds great promise for human-machine interaction and biomedical engineering. However, to measure the individual joint motion with multiple degrees of freedom, many sensor networks are normally required and pinpointed onto the targeted area, restricting body movement. This is due to the limitation of current wearable sensors; inferring a sensor deformation based on the sensor's electrical signal is challenging. A new concept of wearable sensor that can recognize how the sensor deforms could radically solve this issue. Here, we report a wearable integrated piezoelectric film sensor (i-PFS) capable of detecting basic deformations. To achieve this, for the first time, we propose a novel design concept of using uniaxially drawn piezoelectric poly L-lactic acid (PLLA) films to engineer unimodal tension, bend, shear, and twist sensors that only respond to their corresponding deformations with the enhanced piezoelectr...