A web-based system for home monitoring of patients with Parkinson's disease using wearable sensors

This letter introduces MercuryLive, a platform to enable home monitoring of patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) using wearable sensors. MercuryLive contains three tiers: a resource-aware data collection engine that relies upon wearable sensors, web services for live streaming and storage of sensor data, and a web-based graphical user interface client with video conferencing capability. Besides, the platform has the capability of analyzing sensor (i.e., accelerometer) data to reliably estimate clinical scores capturing the severity of tremor, bradykinesia, and dyskinesia. Testing results showed an average data latency of less than 400 ms and video latency of about 200 ms with video frame rate of about 13 frames/s when 800 kb/s of bandwidth were available and we used a 40% video compression, and data feature upload requiring 1 min of extra time following a 10 min interactive session. These results indicate that the proposed platform is suitable to monitor patients with PD to facilitate the titration of medications in the late stages of the disease.     

Highly Elastic Graphene‐Based Electronics Toward Electronic Skin

Epidermal electronics are extensively explored as an important platform for future biomedical engineering. Epidermal devices are typically fabricated using high‐cost methods employing complex vacuum microfabrication processes, limiting their widespread potential in wearable electronics. Here, a low‐cost, solution‐based approach using electroconductive reduced graphene oxide (RGO) sheets on elastic and porous poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS) thin films for multifunctional, high‐performance, graphene‐based epidermal bioelectrodes and strain sensors is presented. These devices are fabricated employing simple coatings and direct patterning without using any complicated microfabrication processes. The graphene bioelectrodes show a superior stretchability (up to 150% strain), with mechanical durability up to 5000 cycles of stretching and releasing, and low sheet resistance (1.5 kΩ per square), and the graphene strain sensors exhibit a high sensitivity (a gauge factor of 7 to 173) with a wide sensing range (up to 40% strain). Fully functional applications of dry bioelectrodes in monitoring human electrophysiological signals (i.e., electrocardiogram, electroencephalography, and electromyogram) and highly sensitive strain sensors for precise detection of large‐scale human motions are demonstrated. It is believed that our unique processing capability and multifunctional device platform based on RGO/porous PDMS will pave the way for low‐cost processing and integration of 2D materials for future wearable electronic skin.     

An Integrated Wearable Sweat Sensing Patch for Passive Continuous Analysis of Stress Biomarkers at Rest

Real-time monitoring of mental stress biomarkers in sweat provides the possibility to evaluate mental status in a precise manner. In general, wearable sweat sensors suffer from inconvenient sweat collection, low levels of diagnostic biomarkers in sweat, sophisticated signal processing, and challenges with data visualization. To overcome these challenges, herein an integrated wearable sweat-sensing patch for continuous analysis of stress biomarkers (cortisol, Mg²⁺, and pH) at rest is demonstrated. The sweat sensing patch comprised a microfluidic chip, a highly sensitive sensing platform, an on-site signal processing circuitry (SPCs), and a smartphone installed with a home-developed display software. The sweat collection at rest is realized using a microfluidic chip without perspiration assistance. A ternary composite electrode is designed to obtain good conductivity, high surface area, and massive reactive sites, thereby yielding excellent electrochemical performances and high sensitivity to trace stress biomarkers. The on-site SPC has the function of signal transduction, conditioning, processing, and wireless transmission. The detection results can be displayed on a smartphone through the software. This work represents a significant scientific and technological advancement toward indexing mental stress status and can be used as an innovative tool for psychological diagnosis.     

A wearable point-of-care system for home use that incorporates plug-and-play and wireless standards.

A point-of-care system for continuous health monitoring should be wearable, easy to use, and affordable to promote patient independence and facilitate acceptance of new home healthcare technology. Reconfigurability, interoperability, and scalability are important. Standardization supports these requirements, and encourages an open market where lower product prices result from vendor competition. This paper first discusses candidate standards for wireless communication, plug-and-play device interoperability, and medical information exchange in point-of-care systems. It then addresses the design and implementation of a wearable, plug-and-play system for home care which adopts the IEEE 1073 Medical Information Bus (MIB) standards, and uses Bluetooth as the wireless communication protocol. This standards-based system maximizes user mobility by incorporating a three-level architecture populated by base stations, wearable data loggers, and wearable sensors. Design issues include the implementation of the MIB standards on microcontroller-driven embedded devices, low power consumption, wireless data exchange, and data storage and transmission in a reconfigurable body-area network.     

Large‐Area Ultrathin Graphene Films by Single‐Step Marangoni Self‐Assembly for Highly Sensitive Strain Sensing Application

Promoted by the demand for wearable devices, graphene has been proved to be a promising material for potential applications in flexible and highly sensitive strain sensors. However, low sensitivity and complex processing of graphene retard the development toward the practical applications. Here, an environment‐friendly and cost‐effective method to fabricate large‐area ultrathin graphene films is proposed for highly sensitive flexible strain sensor. The assembled graphene films are derived rapidly at the liquid/air interface by Marangoni effect and the area can be scaled up. These graphene‐based strain sensors exhibit extremely high sensitivity with gauge factor of 1037 at 2% strain, which represents the highest value for graphene platelets at this small deformation so far. This simple fabrication for strain sensors with highly sensitive performance of strain sensor makes it a novel approach to applications in electronic skin, wearable sensors, and health monitoring platforms.     

Wearable HUD for Ecological Field Research Applications

Wearable devices have emerged in the last years with new applications that provide user convenience. Healthcare, sports, safety are some examples of areas in which wearable devices have been used. This paper overviews wearable architectures found in the literature and presents a novel wearable for monitoring ecological environments. The wearable includes a Head-UP Display (HUD) assembled with Google Cardboard API and sensors connected to a development board. Our wearable device provides several functionalities such as distance measurement to objects and weather conditions monitoring. Camera and green lasers combined with a digital image processing algorithm are used to measure the distance to objects. We different development boards to build the system.     

Polyelectrolyte Dielectrics for Flexible Low‐Voltage Organic Thin‐Film Transistors in Highly Sensitive Pressure Sensing

Organic thin‐film transistors (OTFTs) can provide an effective platform to develop flexible pressure sensors in wearable electronics due to their good signal amplification function. However, it is particularly difficult to realize OTFT‐based pressure sensors with both low‐voltage operation and high sensitivity. Here, controllable polyelectrolyte composites based on poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) and polyacrylic acid (PAA) are developed as a type of high‐capacitance dielectrics for flexible OTFTs and ultrasensitive pressure sensors with sub‐1 V operation. Flexible OTFTs using the PAA:PEG dielectrics show good universality and greatly enhanced electrical performance under a much smaller operating voltage of ?0.7 V than those with a pristine PAA dielectric. The low‐voltage OTFTs also exhibit excellent flexibility and bending stability under various bending radii and long cycles. Flexible OTFT‐based pressure sensors with low‐voltage operation and superhigh sensitivity are demonstrated by using a suspended semiconductor/dielectric/gate structure in combination with the PAA:PEG dielectric. The sensors deliver a record high sensitivity of 452.7 kPa^?1 under a low‐voltage of ?0.7 V, and excellent operating stability over 5000 cycles. The OTFT sensors can be built into a wearable sensor array for spatial pressure mapping, which shows a bright potential in flexible electronics such as wearable devices and smart skins.     

Rapid Fabrication of Soft,Multilayered Electronics for Wearable Biomonitoring

Soft integrated electronics are key components for emerging applications in wearable biomonitoring, soft co‐robotics, and physical human–machine interaction. They are composed of soft and elastically deformable circuits and sensors that are combined with packaged microelectronics for signal processing, power regulation, and communication. While promising, widespread use of soft wearable electronics is currently limited by the lack of robust fabrication techniques to rapidly, efficiently, and precisely assemble soft and rigid components into multilayered systems. Here, an efficient digital fabrication approach is presented to create highly customizable wearable electronics through rapid laser machining and adhesion controlled soft materials assembly. Well aligned, multilayered materials are created from 2D and 3D elements that stretch and bend while seamlessly integrating with rigid components such as microchip integrated circuits, discrete electrical components, and interconnects. These techniques are applied using commercially available materials and components and the fabrication of thin, lightweight, customized sensor skins is demonstrated in under an hour. These fully integrated wireless devices conformably bond to the hand and are successfully used for monitoring hand gesture, pulse rate, and blood oxygenation. These materials and methods enable custom wearable electronics while offering versatility in design and functionality for a variety of applications through material selection and construction.     

Preface to the Special Topic on Devices and Circuits for Wearable and IoT Systems

The concept of Internet of Things (IoT) was first proposed by MIT Prof.Kevin Ash-ton in 1999.The implementation of IoT was mainly through RFID in its early time.With advanced technology and manufacture,diverse implementation forms ofIoT are becoming possible.Wearable devices,as an essential branch of IoT,will have broad application prospects in health monitoring and intelligent healthcare.     

Wearable Biosensors for Body Computing

The challenges of growing and aging populations combined with limited clinical resources have created huge demand for wearable and portable healthcare devices. Research advances in wearable biosensors have made it easier to achieve reliable noninvasive monitoring of health and body status. In this review, recent progress in the development of body computing systems for personalized healthcare is presented, with key considerations and case studies. Critical form factors for wearable sensors, their materials, structures, power sources, modes of data communication, and the types of information they can extract from the body are summarized. Statistically meaningful data analysis considerations, including using cohort and longitudinal correlation studies, are reviewed to understand how raw sensor signals can provide actionable information on the state of the body. This informs discussions on how collected sensor data can be used for personalized and even preventative care, such as by guiding closed-loop medical interventions. Finally, outstanding challenges for making wearable sensor systems reliable, practical, and ubiquitous are considered in order to disrupt traditional medical paradigms with personalized and precision care.     

激光微纳制造在传感领域中的应用

物联网和可穿戴器件的快速发展对传感器的制备和性能提出了更高的要求。由于加工速度快、精度高、可控性强、易集成、与材料兼容性高等优点,激光微纳制造已逐渐成为一种流行的材料制备和器件加工技术。通过激光诱导加热、反应和分离这三种激光加工方式实现了对不同材料的激光处理,这为传感器的制备奠定了基础。近年来,研究人员利用激光微纳加工技术制备了应用于紫外线、气体、湿度、温度、应变/应力、生物、环境等信号监测的不同传感器。总结和归纳了目前存在的问题,展望了激光微纳制造在传感领域中的发展方向。希望文中对激光微纳制造应用于传感领域的介绍和总结能够为未来的研究和发展提供思路和参考。     

Power-Aware Data Management Based on Hybrid RAM-NVM Memory for Smart Bracelet

Wearable devices become popular because they can help people observe health condition. The battery life is the critical problem for wearable devices. The non-volatile memory (NVM) attracts attention in recent years because of its fast reading and writing speed, high density, persistence, and especially low idle power. With its low idle power consumption, NVM can be applied in wearable devices to prolong the battery lifetime such as smart bracelet. However, NVM has higher write power consumption than dynamic random access memory (DRAM). In this paper, we assume to use hybrid random access memory (RAM) and NVM architecture for the smart bracelet system. This paper presents a data management algorithm named bracelet power-aware data management (BPADM) based on the architecture. The BPADM can estimate the power consumption according to the memory access, such as sampling rate of data, and then determine the data should be stored in NVM or DRAM in order to satisfy low power. The experimental results show BPADM can reduce power consumption effectively for bracelet in normal and sleeping modes.     

可穿戴式人体姿态识别系统研究进展

随着科技发展,基于可穿戴式传感器的研究逐渐得到重视,显现出功耗低、可携带性好、成本造价低、使用场景不受限制等独特优势。其中重要的一项应用是人体姿态识别,人体姿态识别过程主要分为人体运动信息采集、数据预处理、姿态角求解、模式识别特征的提取与识别。本文介绍了人体姿态识别技术的研究进程,总结了目前常用的传感器,最后对未来人体姿态识别技术发展进行展望。     

Textile‐Based Triboelectric Nanogenerators for Self‐Powered Wearable Electronics

Wearable smart electronic devices based on wireless systems use batteries as a power source. However, recent miniaturization and various functions have increased energy consumption, resulting in problems such as reduction of use time and frequent charging. These factors hinder the development of wearable electronic devices. In order to solve this energy problem, research studies on triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs) are conducted based on the coupling of contact‐electrification and electrostatic induction effects for harvesting the vast amounts of biomechanical energy generated from wearer movement. The development of TENGs that use a variety of structures and materials based on the textile platform is reviewed, including the basic components of fibers, yarns, and fabrics made using various weaving and knitting techniques. These textile‐based TENGs are lightweight, flexible, highly stretchable, and wearable, so that they can effectively harvest biomechanical energy without interference with human motion, and can be used as activity sensors to monitor human motion. Also, the main application of wearable self‐powered systems is demonstrated and the directions of future development of textile‐based TENG for harvesting biomechanical energy presented.     

Pervasive, secure access to a hierarchical sensor-based healthcare monitoring architecture in wireless heterogeneous networks

This study presents a healthcare monitoring architecture coupled with wearable sensor systems and an environmental sensor network for monitoring elderly or chronic patients in their residence. The wearable sensor system, built into a fabric belt, consists of various medical sensors that collect a timely set of physiological health indicators transmitted via low energy wireless communication to mobile computing devices. Three application scenarios are implemented using the proposed network architecture. The group-based data collection and data transmission using the ad hoc mode promote outpatient healthcare services for only one medical staff member assigned to a set of patients. Adaptive security issues for data transmission are performed based on different wireless capabilities. This study also presents a monitoring application prototype for capturing sensor data from wireless sensor nodes. The implemented schemes were verified as performing efficiently and rapidly in the proposed network architecture.     

Wearable Self-Powered Electrochemical Devices for Continuous Health Management

The wearable revolution is already present in society through numerous gadgets. However, the contest remains in fully deployable wearable (bio)chemical sensing. Its use is constrained by the energy consumption which is provided by miniaturized batteries, limiting the autonomy of the device. Hence, the combination of materials and engineering efforts to develop sustainable energy management is paramount in the next generation of wearable self-powered electrochemical devices (WeSPEDs). In this direction, this review highlights for the first time the incorporation of innovative energy harvesting technologies with top-notch wearable self-powered sensors and low-powered electrochemical sensors toward battery-free and self-sustainable devices for health and wellbeing management. First, current elements such as wearable designs, electrochemical sensors, energy harvesters and storage, and user interfaces that conform WeSPEDs are depicted. Importantly, the bottlenecks in the development of WeSPEDs from an analytical perspective, product side, and power needs are carefully addressed. Subsequently, energy harvesting opportunities to power wearable electrochemical sensors are discussed. Finally, key findings that will enable the next generation of wearable devices are proposed. Overall, this review aims to bring new strategies for an energy-balanced deployment of WeSPEDs for successful monitoring of (bio)chemical parameters of the body toward personalized, predictive, and importantly, preventive healthcare.     

Energy-efficient,fast-settling,modified nested-current-mirror,single-stage-amplifier for high-resolution LCDs in 90-nm CMOS

The Internet of Things (IoT) presents opportunities to address a variety of systemic, metabolic healthcare issues. Cardiovascular disease and diabetes are among the greatest contributors to premature death worldwide. Wireless wearable continuous monitoring systems such as ECG sensors connected to the IoT can greatly decrease the risk of death related to cardiac issues by providing valuable long-term information to physicians, as well as immediate contact with emergency services in the event of a heart attack or stroke. In this report we discuss the fabrication, characterization and validation of composite fabric ECG sensors made from Nylon^® coated with reduced graphene oxide (rGO_x) as part of a self-powered wearable IoT sensor. We utilize an electronic probing station to measure electrical properties, take live ECG data to measure signal reliability, and provide detailed surface characterization through scanning electron microscopy. Finally, bonding between the layers of the composite and between composite and the Nylon^® is analyzed by Fourier transform Infrared spectroscopy. Furthermore, a low power analog front end circuit designed in 65 nm CMOS process is presented to interface the sensor with a system on chip used in a wearable IoT healthcare device.     

Textile Technology for Soft Robotic and Autonomous Garments

Textiles have emerged as a promising class of materials for developing wearable robots that move and feel like everyday clothing. Textiles represent a favorable material platform for wearable robots due to their flexibility, low weight, breathability, and soft hand-feel. Textiles also offer a unique level of programmability because of their inherent hierarchical nature, enabling researchers to modify and tune properties at several interdependent material scales. With these advantages and capabilities in mind, roboticists have begun to use textiles, not simply as substrates, but as functional components that program actuation and sensing. In parallel, materials scientists are developing new materials that respond to thermal, electrical, and hygroscopic stimuli by leveraging textile structures for function. Although textiles are one of humankind's oldest technologies, materials scientists and roboticists are just beginning to tap into their potential. This review provides a textile-centric survey of the current state of the art in wearable robotic garments and highlights metrics that will guide materials development. Recent advances in textile materials for robotic components (i.e., as sensors, actuators, and integration components) are described with a focus on how these materials and technologies set the stage for wearable robots programmed at the material level.     

Wearable Energy Generating and Storing Textile Based on Carbon Nanotube Yarns

The challenges of textiles that can generate and store energy simultaneously for wearable devices are to fabricate yarns that generate electrical energy when stretched, yarns that store this electrical energy, and textile geometries that facilitate these functions. To address these challenges, this research incorporates highly stretchable electrochemical yarn harvesters, where available mechanical strains are large and electrochemical energy storing yarns are achieved by weaving. The solid‐state yarn harvester provides a peak power of 5.3 W kg^?1 for carbon nanotubes. The solid‐state yarn supercapacitor provides stable performance when dynamically deformed by bending and stretching, for example. A textile configuration that consists of harvesters, supercapacitors, and a Schottky diode is produced and stores as much electrical energy as is needed by a serial or parallel connection of the harvesters or supercapacitors. This textile can be applied as a power source for health care devices or other wearable devices and be self‐powered sensors for detecting human motion.     

A Self-Powered,Rechargeable, and Wearable Hydrogel Patch for Wireless Gas Detection with Extraordinary Performance

Flexible gas sensors play an indispensable role in diverse applications spanning from environmental monitoring to portable medical electronics. Full wearable gas monitoring system requires the collaborative support of high-performance sensors and miniaturized circuit module, whereas the realization of low power consumption and sustainable measurement is challenging. Here, a self-powered and reusable all-in-one NO₂ sensor is proposed by structurally and functionally coupling the sensor to the battery, with ultrahigh sensitivity (1.92%/ppb), linearity (R² = 0.999), ultralow theoretical detection limit (0.1 ppb), and humidity immunity. This can be attributed to the regulation of the gas reaction route at the molecular level. The addition of amphiphilic zinc trifluoromethanesulfonate (Zn(OTf)₂) enables the H₂O-poor inner Helmholtz layer to be constructed at the electrode–gel interface, thereby facilitating the direct charge transfer process of NO₂ here. The device is then combined with a well-designed miniaturized low-power circuit module with signal conditioning, processing and wireless transmission functions, which can be used as wearable electronics to realize early and remote warning of gas leakage. This study demonstrates a promising way to design a self-powered, sustainable, and flexible gas sensor with high performance and its corresponding wireless sensing system, providing new insight into the all-in-one system of gas detection.