Flexible, Soft, User Friendly Analog Pressure Sensor
Mentor 1
Mohammad H Rahman
Location
Union Wisconsin Room
Start Date
27-4-2018 1:00 PM
Description
Force measurement in spasticity quantification is still looking for a soft non-invasive comfortable accurate pressure sensor. On the market, there are flexible force sensors available, but with these options, they are extremely expensive and are not comfortable for the user to wear. This pressure sensor would be attached onto a patients arm in multiple locations. When a Physical Therapist goes to rehabilitate a patient and improve their range of motion, we will be able to know where and how hard they are pushing on their limbs. Using this data, we are then able to govern out robot with it in an effort to replicate the physical therapist’s session, creating a rehabilitation robot. The sensor was made simply out very few parts. Two identical sheets of metallic fabric and sandwiched in between is a larger sheet of pesioresistive fabric. This fabric has an internal resistance, and when a load is applied across it, the resistance gets larger. Using this we connected wires to the metallic fabric, and connected through a data acquisition box and into LabVIEW. Looking at the data, it is very accurate and scalable. By adding a wide range of known weights, we are able to scale the data. After this, we can apply a known weight and the output in LabVIEW gives us very accurately that actual weight. With the sensor calibrated, we now have a flexible soft non-invasive pressure sensor that can be applied to a patients arm to acquire data. Next, we will be making multiple sensors and attaching them inside a flexible armband that the patient can wear for us to accurately know the position and magnitude of the force applied by the physical therapist.
Flexible, Soft, User Friendly Analog Pressure Sensor
Union Wisconsin Room
Force measurement in spasticity quantification is still looking for a soft non-invasive comfortable accurate pressure sensor. On the market, there are flexible force sensors available, but with these options, they are extremely expensive and are not comfortable for the user to wear. This pressure sensor would be attached onto a patients arm in multiple locations. When a Physical Therapist goes to rehabilitate a patient and improve their range of motion, we will be able to know where and how hard they are pushing on their limbs. Using this data, we are then able to govern out robot with it in an effort to replicate the physical therapist’s session, creating a rehabilitation robot. The sensor was made simply out very few parts. Two identical sheets of metallic fabric and sandwiched in between is a larger sheet of pesioresistive fabric. This fabric has an internal resistance, and when a load is applied across it, the resistance gets larger. Using this we connected wires to the metallic fabric, and connected through a data acquisition box and into LabVIEW. Looking at the data, it is very accurate and scalable. By adding a wide range of known weights, we are able to scale the data. After this, we can apply a known weight and the output in LabVIEW gives us very accurately that actual weight. With the sensor calibrated, we now have a flexible soft non-invasive pressure sensor that can be applied to a patients arm to acquire data. Next, we will be making multiple sensors and attaching them inside a flexible armband that the patient can wear for us to accurately know the position and magnitude of the force applied by the physical therapist.
