Point-of-use flexible sensors for mechanical and chemical sensing

Our research aims to develop low-cost, flexible, large-area sensor devices for health and environmental applications, and we will discuss using multimodal sensors for two different point-of-use case studies: 1) Motor skills characterization. There is no objective metric for evaluating motor skill training progress, and current assessments rely on qualitative surveys. We have fabricated an instrumented glove with touch sensors on textile for motor characterization. This glove is used for characterizing motor skills of 20 patients suffering from hypertonia common in Parkinson’s disease, and other neurological motor disorders, to improve the accuracy in tracking patient response to therapy. 2) phosphate detection. There is a need of sensor technologies in environmental applications. In particular, the run-off of phosphate from agriculture and waste treatment poses pollution threats to ecosystems. Hence, rapid on-site detection of phosphate is highly desired to manage contaminants. We have combined low-cost chemical sensors on disposable gloves, and demonstrated sensitive chemical detection in a point-of-use platform that is scalable and economical.