Incorporating End-User Feedback in the Development and Validation of a Smart Textile for assessing Sports Training and Performance

Objectives: The aims of the research project were to explore the need and desire of a new sport wearable within applied practice by creating dialogue with the end-users. Furthermore, the research project sets out to quantify the reliability and validity a new sports wearable, KiTT (Knitted intelligent Textile Tracker), against the current gold-standard three-dimensional motion-analysis counter-part. Methods: Study 1 will utilise semi-structured interviews to create dialogue between the researcher and end-users. This will help provide an image into the current use of technology within applied practice. Furthermore, study 2 will capture and calculate the relative knee angles from KiTT’s raw resistance, and compare the results to that of Vicon, where reliability and validity will be assessed; this is imperative before task-specific research. Results: Study 1 identified a need, and requirement for new sport wearables, specifically in the form of e-textiles. This would enable end-users to adopt technology into their work, potentially enhancing their output. In addition, study 2 suggests that KiTT serves as a valid and reliable tool at recording relative knee angle across five commonly used sporting exercises, with high degrees of accuracy. Conclusion: End-users stated a need and requirement for technology such as KiTT to be created for adoption within their practice. Current systems are often inaccessible and can lead to performance losses. KiTT serves as a valid alternative to motion-capture, whilst offering more benefits to the user (cost-friendly, easy to use, and portable). When investigating an individual’s relative knee angle, KiTT should be considered especially in specific testing conditions

Design of a multi-sensors wearable platform for remote monitoring of knee rehabilitation

Smart wearables are a promising tool for the objective and quantifiable monitoring of patients' capabilities during remote at-home assessments. A novel platform for the remote assessment of patients undergoing knee rehabilitation has been presented in this paper, SKYRE. The challenges associated with the design of the SKYRE platform are described. The platform consists of a multi-sensor wearable garment and an associated ICT architecture, with the aim of capturing real-time objective assessment of physical rehabilitation exercises and support clinicians in their decision-making process as well as provide guidance to the end-users so as to increase their awareness and compliance. The overall system architecture is defined based on usersâ requirements and industrial design, and both hardware and software platforms have been thoroughly discussed in detail, including electronic design, textile integration, prototyping process, and firmware development, as well as the mobile application and web portal implementation. Multiple sensing technologies are adopted, including motion capture, electromyography measurements, and muscle electro-stimulation. The developed system, SKYRE, meets the end-usersâ requirements, and the validation shows that the system presents results comparable to gold-standard technologies. SKYRE therefore might represent a valid alternative for patients and clinicians willing to perform a remote objective assessment of the rehabilitation process following knee surgery

A multi-sensors wearable system for remote assessment of physiotherapy exercises during ACL rehabilitation

In this paper, the challenges associated with the design of a novel multi-sensor wearable system for the objective assessment of exercises during lower-limbs rehabilitation are described. The overall system architecture is defined, and finally both the implemented hardware and software platforms are illustrated in detail. Multiple sensing technologies are adopted including motion data, electromyography measurements, and muscle electro-stimulation. The software stack provides guidance to the users throughout the rehabilitation therapy sessions, and allows clinicians to access the data collected remotely in real-time thus supporting their clinical evaluation. Finally, preliminary results of the comparison between the knee joint angle estimated by the developed system against a gold-standard inertial-based system are provided showing promising results for future validation

Wearable Technology For Healthcare And Athletic Performance

Wearable technology research has led to advancements in healthcare and athletic performance. Devices range from one size fits all fitness trackers to custom fitted devices with tailored algorithms. Because these devices are comfortable, discrete, and pervasive in everyday life, custom solutions can be created to fit an individual\u27s specific needs. In this dissertation, we design wearable sensors, develop features and algorithms, and create intelligent feedback systems that promote the advancement of healthcare and athletic performance. First, we present Magneto: a body mounted electromagnet-based sensing system for joint motion analysis. Joint motion analysis facilitates research into injury prevention, rehabilitation, and activity monitoring. Sensors used in such analysis must be unobtrusive, accurate, and capable of monitoring fast-paced dynamic motions. Our system is wireless, has a high sampling rate, and is unaffected by outside magnetic noise. Magnetic noise commonly influences magnetic field readings via magnetic interference from the Earth\u27s magnetic field, the environment, and nearby ferrous objects. Magneto uses the combination of an electromagnet and magnetometer to remove environmental interference from a magnetic field reading. We evaluated this sensing method to show its performance when removing the interference in three movement dimensions, in six environments, and with six different sampling rates. Then, we localized the electromagnet with respect to the magnetic field reader, allowing us to apply Magneto in two pilot studies: measuring elbow angles and calculating shoulder positions. We calculated elbow angles to the nearest 15â—¦ with 93.8% accuracy, shoulder position in two-degrees of freedom with 96.9% accuracy, and shoulder positions in three-degrees of freedom with 75.8% accuracy. Second, we present TracKnee: a sensing knee sleeve designed and fabricated to unobtrusively measure knee angles using conductive fabric sensors. We propose three models that can be used in succession to calculate knee angles from voltage. These models take an input of voltage, calculate the resistance of our conductive fabric sensor, then calculate the change in length across the front of the knee and finally to the angle of the knee. We evaluated our models and our device by conducting a user study with six participants where we collected 240 ground truth angles and sensor data from our TracKnee device. Our results show that our model is 94.86% accurate to the nearest 15th degree angle and that our average error per angle is error per angle is 3.69 degrees. Third, we present ServesUp: a sensing shirt designed to monitor shoulder and elbow motion during the volleyball serve. In this project, we will designed and fabricated a sensing shirt that is comfortable, unobtrusive, and washable that an athlete can wear during and without impeding volleyball play. To make the shirt comfortable, we used soft and flexible conductive fabric sensors to monitor the motion of the shoulder and the elbow. We conducted a user study with ten volleyball players for a total of 1000 volleyball serves. We classified serving motion using a KNN with a classification accuracy of 89.2%. We will use this data provide actionable insights back to the player to help improve their serving skill. Fourth, we present BreathEZ, the first smartwatch application that provides both choking first aid instruction and real-time tactile and visual feedback on the quality of the abdominal thrust compressions. We evaluated our application through two user studies involving 20 subjects and 200 abdominal thrust events. The results of our study show that BreathEZ achieves a classification accuracy of 90.9% for abdominal thrusts. All participants that used BreathEZ in our study were able to improve their performance of abdominal thrusts. Of these participants, 60% were able to perform within the recommended range with the use of BreathEZ. Comparatively no participants trained with a video only reached that range. Finally, we present BBAid: the first smartwatch based system that provides real-time feedback on the back blow portion of choking first aid while instructing the user on first aid procedure. We evaluated our application through two user studies involving 26 subjects and 260 back blow events. The results of our study show that BBAid achieves a classification accuracy of 93.75% for back blows. With the use of BBAid, participants in our study were able to perform back blows within the recommended range 75% of the time. Comparatively the participants trained with a video only reached that range 12% of the time. All participants in the study, after receiving training were much more willing to perform choking first aid

Design of an e-textile sleeve for tracking knee rehabilitation for older adults

The occurrence of total knee replacements is increasing in the United States for persons over the age of 45 because they are inexpensive and a very effective method for treating degenerative joint diseases. Rehabilitation requires regular access to a wide variety of resources and personnel and, as the demand for post-operative, rehabilitative care increases, the ability to marginally relieve the healthcare system by offloading resources to the patient is necessary. Tools to enable tracking a patient’s rehabilitative progress at home are an essential method to help unload the healthcare system. The purpose of this project is to design and develop a wearable home rehabilitation device for knee replacement. This thesis utilizes design ethnography tools such as expert interviews, rehabilitation observation, a participatory design workshop, iterative development, and an idea feedback study. Leveraging advancements in technology and the field of eTextiles, this study investigates the product feasibility and acceptance of discreet on-body sensors to provide a product that enables patients to better perform rehabilitation on their own, but also to allow for a feedback loop for physicians and therapists to view patient progress.M.S

Integration and testing of a three-axis accelerometer in a woven e-textile sleeve for wearable movement monitoring

This paper presents a method to integrate and package an accelerometer within a textile to create an electronic textile (e-textile). The smallest commercially available accelerometer sensor (2 mm × 2 mm × 0.95 mm) is used in the e-textile and is fully integrated within the weave structure of the fabric itself, rendering it invisible to the wearer. The e-textile forms the basis of a wearable woven sleeve which is applied to arm and knee joint bending angle measurement. The integrated e-textile based accelerometer sensor system is used to identify activity type, such as walking or running, and count the total number of steps taken. Performance was verified by comparing measurements of specific elbow joint angles over the range of 0° to 180° with those obtained from a commercial bending sensor from Bend Labs and from a custom-built goniometer. The joint bending angles, measured by all three sensors, show good agreement with an error of less than ~1% of reading which provides a high degree of confidence in the e-textile sensor system. Subsequently, knee joint angles were measured experimentally on three subjects with each being tested three times on each of three activities (walking, running and climbing stairs). This allowed the minimum and maximum knee joint angles for each activity to be determined. This data is then used to identify activity type and perform step counting

Recent developments in textile based polymeric smart sensor for human health monitoring: A review

In the modern age, the most important and prevailing issue is the monitoring of human health. To address this, several devices have been developed and a need new materials investigated. The idea of textile-based smart sensors is emerging rapidly. In this regard, ICPs and ECPs have attracted the attention of researchers due to their mechanical adaptability to suit the characteristics of textile fabric. The lighter weight, stretchability and wearability, etc. are considered an advantage while selecting the material for developing sensors not only in health monitoring but also in biomedical, sports, and military fields. The idea behind wearable sensing devices is to enable easy integration of the sensor device into daily life routines. Such wearable sensors also have the potential for real time and online monitoring of human health and integrate with smart monitoring devices. The purpose of this review is to discuss the recent developments in smart monitoring sensors.Open Access funding for this article is provided by the Qatar National Library, Al Luqta Street, Al-Rayyan P.O Box 5825 Doha, Qatar” The authors acknowledge the funding received for this work from Higher Education Commission (HEC) Pakistan under the Technology Development Fund (TDF) for grant number TDF-03-103

Computational Design of Wiring Layout on Tight Suits with Minimal Motion Resistance

An increasing number of electronics are directly embedded on the clothing to monitor human status (e.g., skeletal motion) or provide haptic feedback. A specific challenge to prototype and fabricate such a clothing is to design the wiring layout, while minimizing the intervention to human motion. We address this challenge by formulating the topological optimization problem on the clothing surface as a deformation-weighted Steiner tree problem on a 3D clothing mesh. Our method proposed an energy function for minimizing strain energy in the wiring area under different motions, regularized by its total length. We built the physical prototype to verify the effectiveness of our method and conducted user study with participants of both design experts and smart cloth users. On three types of commercial products of smart clothing, the optimized layout design reduced wire strain energy by an average of 77% among 248 actions compared to baseline design, and 18% over the expert design.Comment: This work is accepted at SIGGRAPH ASIA 2023(Conference Track

The Meaning of A Choice

If you are disabled or disadvantaged, you will be dismissed and stifled. Few people will actively care for your struggles. As a person with autism, I was deeply fearful of the persecution I had faced throughout my life; it was a fear that followed me with terrifying determination. I desperately wanted to blend into society. So I designed myself to be devoid of any weakness, and productivity was the way I chose to conceal any difficulties I faced. It was a way to measure my success — a way to measure my normalcy. Standard medical textiles are generic, cumbersome devices. They are also hyper-visible and instantly identifiable. Meant to support the wearer, they become the “Judas” — the betrayer illuminating a medical condition. Individuals with assistive textiles often must trade privacy as the price for using their device. This sacrifice discourages individuals from using their medical wear and can have dangerous consequences on both mental and physical health. Many individuals, much like I did, have and will choose to forego their conspicuous assistive devices to avoid persecution — for the sake of normalcy. This book is imbued with a set of ethics. Most artists pull from personal experiences to fuel the creative process. In a way, I’ve always regarded a studio practice as the product of a deep-seated need to advocate for one’s spirit. However, looking out into the world, I never saw my interests reflected back. I struggled to come to terms with my nature as an autistic individual, and hesitated to name myself an artist. I now know that an artist can work with a set of morals and values, rather than a set grouping of materials. In this instance, I name my moral compass as my medium. I approach this thesis journey with the same fervor and honesty that I have always approached my studio practice, irrespective of my chosen expertise in knitted textiles. It is my strong belief that an ineffective solution is almost just as bad as the problem. There is no mechanical, material, intellectual, or creative limit in textiles that prevents designers from producing assistive textiles that are both physically and emotionally supportive. If I cannot find what I am looking for in the world, then I will make it happen myself. I imagine supportive textiles, simultaneously clothing and medical devices, that return autonomy to the wearer. These textiles are designed with the human in mind. They heal physically and emotionally, while being visually captivating — fully reflecting the wearer’s sense of self