Project :: Textile Knit Stretch Sensors

Textile Knit Stretch Sensors

Smart textiles -- also as known as intelligent textiles, electronic textiles or e-textiles. With the increasing application of soft sensors in the wearable field, the research of intelligent textiles has attracted considerable attention. There are increasingly textiles have the ability to sense, thinking, reacting and displaying this world by wearable computing. Wearable technology is widely used for collecting information about the human body and its movement by placing sensors on the body.

This project is looking into materials for stretch sensors that can be integrated into a garment to detect a dancer’s body movements. We compare twelve commercially produced conductive fabrics and four sensors knit in our research lab using two commercially available conductive yarns. These materials were chosen because they are commonly used by e-textile designers. The commercially produced knitted conductive fabrics have varying compositions, knit structures, and production methods which give the fabrics diverse properties.

In this project, sixteen stretch sensors, each with different conductive stretch fabrics, are evaluated: EeonTex (Eeonyx Corporation), knitted silver-plated yarn, and knitted spun stainless steel yarn. The sensors’ performance is tested using a tensile tester while monitoring their resistance with a microcontroller. Each sensor was analyzed for its sensitivity, linearity, hysteresis, responsiveness, and fatigue through a series of dynamic and static tests. The research is aiming to find out a reliable and repeatable conductive stretchy materials to make a sensing system for body movement, which will contribute to the production of digital performance.

People

An Liang
Becky Stewart
Nick Bryan-Kinns

Research Areas

Smart textiles
Sensor design
Body movement