Printed Wearable Sensors for Monitoring Muscles Activity -

Project Title: Printed Wearable Sensors for Monitoring Muscles Activity

Project Description:

Over the past few years, wearable technology has emerged as a major component of the lifestyle and fitness markets, mostly in the form of smart bands and smartwatches. Nevertheless, state-of-the-art measurement systems for the evaluation of athletic performance still rely on bulky and cumbersome instrumentation. Being part of the “STEX” project, in collaboration with Microgate Srl, this PhD project is aimed at the design, fabrication and characterization of real-time wearable solutions to monitor the muscles’ activity, to provide immediate feedback to the athlete about their physiological status. Three approaches will be pursued: monitoring of the respiratory rate using strain sensors, analysis of sweat using biochemical sensors and analysis of the gas emitted from the skin using gas sensors. Such sensors will be fabricated combining conventional microfabrication technologies and printing techniques, in the form of low-cost, non-invasive, sensitive and selective sensing platforms that will be ultimately integrated in textiles and garments.

The main parts of the project will be:

Design and characterization of the sensors in laboratory environment.
Integration of such sensors in wearable platforms.
Validation of the wearable platforms through human trials in real-life situations.