Scalable Wearable Pressure Sensor For Movement Monitoring And Injury Rehabilitation: An IIT Delhi Study
As gait and postural difficulty issues are becoming common in the current world, monitoring them is important. The postural deformity detection can direct to the required recovery process, assess various medical conditions, advance the patient”s recovery and avert long-term harm. Researchers who are working on the area found that flexible wearable sensors attached to specific body part and application of specific pressure patterns enables to monitoring the condition and assist in recovery.
Researchers at IIT Delhi, recently developed one such scalable wearable pressure sensor facilitating human movement monitoring and injury rehabilitation. It offers the benefit of easy array design for pixelated sensing over large area, simple process flow, and low-cost implementation. The proposed sensor is based on a nanocomposite material, with a combination of light-sensitive polymer and piezoelectric nanoparticles.
The research study is conducted by research scholars Nadeem Tariq Beigh and Faizan Tariq Beigh, and Prof. Dhiman Mallick, from the Department of Electrical Engineering, IIT Delhi, and published as a paper titled ‘Machine Learning Assisted Hybrid Transduction Nanocomposite Based Flexible Pressure Sensor Matrix for Human Gait Analysis’ in Nano energy, a leading journal in the field of nanotechnology.
In the study, they project that sensor is fully flexible and can be developed as a sensor array where its robust design could fits inside the insole of varying sizes. Therefore, it can be easily attached at the palm or any body part where localised pressure sensing can be useful.
The sensor generated output is evaluated by conventional Machine Learning models and is connected to a person”s walking behaviour. Clinical specialists can understand the type of deformity by comparing the pressure patterns with the pre-defined patterns of a normal person. The sensors can also assist different activities by providing the variability of foot pressure movements, correlating each pressure pattern to a given activity.
The study argues that sensors has immense advantage in smart healthcare systems for critical health analysis, and also helpful in elderly fall detection, and injury rehabilitation. Besides healthcare, the proposed sensor has immense potential to engage agriculture, the energy sector, industries, and sports as well.
