Sensors 2017, 17(8), 1752; https://doi.org/10.3390/s17081752
Development of Wearable Sheet-Type Shear Force Sensor and Measurement System that is Insusceptible to Temperature and Pressure
1
Research Institute, National Rehabilitation Center for Persons with Disabilities, 4-1 Namiki, Tokorozawa, Saitama 359-8555, Japan
2
Department of Electronic Engineering, School of Engineering, Tokyo Denki University, Tokyo 120-8551, Japan
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Received: 27 June 2017 / Revised: 28 July 2017 / Accepted: 28 July 2017 / Published: 31 July 2017
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Flexible Electronics and Sensors)
Abstract
A sheet-type shear force sensor and a measurement system for the sensor were developed. The sensor has an original structure where a liquid electrolyte is filled in a space composed of two electrode-patterned polymer films and an elastic rubber ring. When a shear force is applied on the surface of the sensor, the two electrode-patterned films mutually move so that the distance between the internal electrodes of the sensor changes, resulting in current increase or decrease between the electrodes. Therefore, the shear force can be calculated by monitoring the current between the electrodes. Moreover, it is possible to measure two-dimensional shear force given that the sensor has multiple electrodes. The diameter and thickness of the sensor head were 10 mm and 0.7 mm, respectively. Additionally, we also developed a measurement system that drives the sensor, corrects the baseline of the raw sensor output, displays data, and stores data as a computer file. Though the raw sensor output was considerably affected by the surrounding temperature, the influence of temperature was drastically decreased by introducing a simple arithmetical calculation. Moreover, the influence of pressure simultaneously decreased after the same calculation process. A demonstrative measurement using the sensor revealed the practical usefulness for on-site monitoring. View Full-TextKeywords:
shear force sensor; liquid electrolyte; flexible electrode film; mobile sensor system; compensation calculation; wheelchair; prosthetics
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Toyama, S.; Tanaka, Y.; Shirogane, S.; Nakamura, T.; Umino, T.; Uehara, R.; Okamoto, T.; Igarashi, H. Development of Wearable Sheet-Type Shear Force Sensor and Measurement System that is Insusceptible to Temperature and Pressure. Sensors 2017, 17, 1752.
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