scholarly journals A Self-Powered Portable Flexible Sensor of Monitoring Speed Skating Techniques

Biosensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 108
Author(s):  
Zhuo Lu ◽  
Yongsheng Zhu ◽  
Changjun Jia ◽  
Tianming Zhao ◽  
Meiyue Bian ◽  
...  

With the development of 5G technology, contemporary technologies such as Internet of Things (IoT) and Big Data analyses have been widely applied to the sport industry. This paper focuses on the design of a portable, self-powered, flexible sensor, which does not require an external power supply. The sensor is capable of monitoring speed skating techniques, thereby helping professional athletes to enhance their performance. This sensor mainly consists of Polyvinylidene Fluoride (PVDF) with polarization after a silvering electrode and a flexible polyester substrate. Flexible sensors are attached to the push-off joint part of speed skaters and the ice skate blade. During motion, it produces different piezoelectricity signals depending on the states of motion. The monitoring and analyzing of the real-time sensor signals will adjust the athlete’s skating angle, frequency, and push-off techniques, thus improving user training and enhancing performance. Moreover, the production of piezoelectric signals can charge the capacitor, provide power for small electronic equipment (e.g., wireless device), and extend the applications of wearable flexible sensors to the Big Data and IoT technologies in the sport industry.

Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (15) ◽  
pp. 5144
Author(s):  
Chongle Zhao ◽  
Changjun Jia ◽  
Yongsheng Zhu ◽  
Tianming Zhao

Self-powered piezoelectric sensor can achieve real-time and harmless monitoring of motion processes without external power supply, which can be attached on body skin or joints to detect human motion and powered by mechanical energy. Here, a sensor for monitoring emergent motion is developed using the PVDF as active material and piezoelectric output as sensing signal. The multi-point control function enables the sensor to monitor the sequence of force order, angle change, and motion frequency of the “elbow lift, arm extension, and wrist compression” during shooting basketball. In addition, the sensor shows can simultaneously charge the capacitor to provide more power for intelligence, typically Bluetooth transmission. The sensor shows good performance in other field, such as rehabilitation monitoring and speech input systems. Therefore, the emerging application of flexible sensors have huge long-term prospects in sport big data collection and Internet of Things (IoT).


Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (13) ◽  
pp. 4508
Author(s):  
Boyan Liu ◽  
Liuyang Han ◽  
Lyuming Pan ◽  
Hongzheng Li ◽  
Jingjing Zhao ◽  
...  

This research introduces an idea of producing both nanoscale and microscale pores in piezoelectric material, and combining the properties of the molecular β-phase dipoles in ferroelectric material and the space charge dipoles in order to increase the sensitivity of the sensor and modulate the response frequency bandwidth of the material. Based on this idea, a bi-nano-micro porous dual ferro-electret hybrid self-powered flexible heart sound detection sensor is proposed. Acid etching and electrospinning were the fabrication processes used to produce a piezoelectric film with nanoscale and microscale pores, and corona poling was used for air ionization to produce an electret effect. In this paper, the manufacturing process of the sensor is introduced, and the effect of the porous structure and corona poling on improving the performance of the sensor is discussed. The proposed flexible sensor has an equivalent piezoelectric coefficient d33 of 3312 pC/N, which is much larger than the piezoelectric coefficient of the common piezoelectric materials. Experiments were carried out to verify the function of the flexible sensor together with the SS17L heart sound sensor (BIOPAC, Goleta, CA, USA) as a reference. The test results demonstrated its practical application for wearable heart sound detection and the potential for heart disease detection. The proposed flexible sensor in this paper could realize batch production, and has the advantages of flexibility, low production cost and a short processing time compared with the existing heart sound detection sensors.


Author(s):  
Debarun Sengupta ◽  
Ajay Giri Prakash Kottapalli ◽  
Jianmin Miao ◽  
Chee Yee Kwok

Author(s):  
Lei Ma ◽  
Shreyes N. Melkote ◽  
John B. Morehouse ◽  
James B. Castle ◽  
James W. Fonda ◽  
...  

A sensor module that integrates a thin film Polyvinylidene Fluoride (PVDF) piezoelectric strain sensor and an in situ data logging platform has been designed and implemented for monitoring of feed and transverse forces in the peripheral end milling process. The module, which is mounted on the tool shank, measures the dynamic strain(s) produced in the tool and logs the data into an on-board card for later retrieval. The close proximity between the signal source and the PVDF sensor(s) minimizes the attenuation and distortion of the signal along the transmitting path and provides high-fidelity signals. It also facilitates the employment of a first principles model based on Euler-Bernoulli beam theory and the constitutive equations of the piezoelectric sensor material to relate the in situ measured PVDF sensor signals to the feed and transverse forces acting on the tool. The PVDF sensor signals are found to compare well with the force signals measured by a platform type piezoelectric force dynamometer in peripheral end milling experiments.


Electronics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (19) ◽  
pp. 2322
Author(s):  
Xiaofei Ma ◽  
Xuan Liu ◽  
Xinxing Li ◽  
Yunfei Ma

With the rapid development of the Internet of Things (IoTs), big data analytics has been widely used in the sport field. In this paper, a light-weight, self-powered sensor based on a triboelectric nanogenerator for big data analytics in sports has been demonstrated. The weight of each sensing unit is ~0.4 g. The friction material consists of polyaniline (PANI) and polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE). Based on the triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG), the device can convert small amounts of mechanical energy into the electrical signal, which contains information about the hitting position and hitting velocity of table tennis balls. By collecting data from daily table tennis training in real time, the personalized training program can be adjusted. A practical application has been exhibited for collecting table tennis information in real time and, according to these data, coaches can develop personalized training for an amateur to enhance the ability of hand control, which can improve their table tennis skills. This work opens up a new direction in intelligent athletic facilities and big data analytics.


2021 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zubair Iqbal ◽  
Maria Pozzi ◽  
Domenico Prattichizzo ◽  
Gionata Salvietti

Collaborative robots promise to add flexibility to production cells thanks to the fact that they can work not only close to humans but also with humans. The possibility of a direct physical interaction between humans and robots allows to perform operations that were inconceivable with industrial robots. Collaborative soft grippers have been recently introduced to extend this possibility beyond the robot end-effector, making humans able to directly act on robotic hands. In this work, we propose to exploit collaborative grippers in a novel paradigm in which these devices can be easily attached and detached from the robot arm and used also independently from it. This is possible only with self-powered hands, that are still quite uncommon in the market. In the presented paradigm not only hands can be attached/detached to/from the robot end-effector as if they were simple tools, but they can also remain active and fully functional after detachment. This ensures all the advantages brought in by tool changers, that allow for quick and possibly automatic tool exchange at the robot end-effector, but also gives the possibility of using the hand capabilities and degrees of freedom without the need of an arm or of external power supplies. In this paper, the concept of detachable robotic grippers is introduced and demonstrated through two illustrative tasks conducted with a new tool changer designed for collaborative grippers. The novel tool changer embeds electromagnets that are used to add safety during attach/detach operations. The activation of the electromagnets is controlled through a wearable interface capable of providing tactile feedback. The usability of the system is confirmed by the evaluations of 12 users.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Kai Guo ◽  
Senhao Zhang ◽  
Shasha Zhao ◽  
Hongbo Yang

This work takes the production and usage scenarios of the data glove as the research object and studies the method of applying the flexible sensor to the data glove. Many studies are also devoted to exploring the transplantation of flexible sensors to data gloves. However, this type of research still lacks the display of specific application scenarios such as gesture recognition or hand rehabilitation training. A small amount of experimental data and theoretical analysis are difficult to promote the development of flexible sensors and flexible data gloves design schemes. Therefore, this study uses the self-made flexible sensor of the research group as the core sensing unit to produce a flexible data glove to monitor the bending changes of the knuckles and then use it for simple gesture recognition and rehabilitation training.


Author(s):  
Shaoji Wu ◽  
Li Tang ◽  
Yue Xu ◽  
Guangcong Tang ◽  
Bailin Dai ◽  
...  

At present, hydrogel flexible sensors have attracted wide attention in the field of wearable electronic devices. However, hydrogel flexible sensors need external solid state power supply to output stable signals....


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