Textile Pressure Force Mapping

Abstract

While much effort in smart textile technology development has been put on acquiring biomedical signals such as ECG/EMG or tissue bioimpedance, an important alternative is mapping the pressure which is applied to the textile substrate itself. The modality has inspired researchers to instrument a wide variety of daily items and wearable garments for interactive controlling and activity monitoring in the recent years. To offer a guideline for implementing such systems, this chapter will introduce textile-based pressure force mapping sensing technology, from comparisons with other smart textile technologies to sensing principles, driving circuitry and finally several application examples.