Development of a smart garment for monitoring body postures based on FBG and flex sensing technologies

In this study, a Smart Sensing Garment-SSG was developed for monitoring body postures based on FBG and Bend sensors. A FBG smart belt was fabricated mainly by embedding FBG sensors inside a special silica gel and a related smart garment was proposed by stitching flex sensors inside garment surface. Both the smart belt and SSG were calibrated in laboratory by systematically changing body postures. The smart garment was then used to monitor body postures at various joint positions of one male subject. It is found that FBG sensors mounted at the joint positions of palm, wrist, and elbow show reasonable and persistent wavelength changes for each step by step angle change. The bend sensors mounted inside the SSG exhibited linear rise as the increase of joint angles at the positions of palm, wrist and elbow. Static tests and Jogging tests were conducted in laboratory to examine the performance of the smart sensing garment at various static and kinematic postures. The measured data from bend sensors show that the instant movement of a male subject can be successfully detected by a SSG. Combination of the two technologies (FBG and Bend Sensors) can be used to investigate the change of body postures arise from the different diseases such as stroke and bone fracture.