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“Imagine clothing or hospital bed sheets capable of monitoring your breathing and physical gestures, or AI-powered textiles that allow humans to interact more safely and intuitively with robots,” said Andreas Leber from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL). “The flexible transmission lines that we've developed can do all of this.”
The sensors invented by the Lausanne researchers can detect different kinds of fabric deformation like stretching, pressure and torque at the same time. “Finding a method for calculating all that was our biggest challenge, because it's really difficult for sensors to measure several movements simultaneously,” said Leber.
“Conventional sensors have several drawbacks. First, they are fragile and break easily. Second, you need a lot of them to cover a large area, which eliminates many of the advantages of fabrics. And third, each type of conventional sensor can detect only one kind of deformation."
By incorporating concepts from reflectometry, doctoral assistant Leber and Professor Fabien Sorin created the sensors and claimed to ‘open up new doors’ for smart textiles. Using several of the sensors can turn the entire surface of a fabric into a large sensor.
“Our technology works similar to a radar, but it sends out electrical impulses instead of electromagnetic waves,” said Leber. “Our fibre sensors operate like transmission lines for high-frequency communication. The system measures the time between when a signal is sent out and when it's received, and uses that to determine the exact location, type and intensity of deformation.”
A liquid metal serves as the conductor, and the sensor manufacture involves an optical fibre fabrication process. The structure is just a few micrometres thick and reportedly has to be ‘perfect’ to work.
The EPFL team hopes to make the technology more portable by shrinking down the electronic component.
The research was published in Nature Electronics.
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