An Energy-Autonomous Smart Shirt employing wearable sensors for Users’ Safety and Protection in Hazardous Workplaces

none4siWearable devices represent a versatile technology in the IoT paradigm, enabling noninvasive and accurate data collection directly from the human body. This paper describes the development of a smart shirt to monitor working conditions in particularly dangerous workplaces. The wearable device integrates a wide set of sensors to locally acquire the user’s vital signs (e.g., heart rate, blood oxygenation, and temperature) and environmental parameters (e.g., the concentration of dangerous gas species and oxygen level). Electrochemical gas-monitoring modules were designed and integrated into the garment for acquiring the concentrations of CO, O2, CH2O, and H2S. The acquired data are wirelessly sent to a cloud platform (IBM Cloud), where they are displayed, processed, and stored. A mobile application was deployed to gather data from the wearable devices and forward them toward the cloud application, enabling the system to operate in areas where aWiFi hotspot is not available. Additionally, the smart shirt comprises a multisource harvesting section to scavenge energy from light, body heat, and limb movements. Indeed, the wearable device integrates several harvesters (thin-film solar panels, thermoelectric generators (TEGs), and piezoelectric transducers), a low-power conditioning section, and a 380 mAh LiPo battery to accumulate the recovered charge. Field tests indicated that the harvesting section could provide up to 216 mW mean power, fully covering the power requirements (P = 1.86 mW) of the sensing, processing, and communication sections in all considered conditions (3.54 mW in the worst-case scenario). However, the 380 mAh LiPo battery guarantees about a 16-day lifetime in the complete absence of energy contributions from the harvesting section.Special Issue “Innovative Materials, Smart Sensors and IoT-based Electronic Solutions for Wearable Applications”, https://www.mdpi.com/journal/applsci/special_issues/Materials_Sensors_Electronic_Solutions_Wearable_ApplicationsopenRoberto De Fazio, Abdel-Razzak Al-Hinnawi, Massimo De Vittorio, Paolo ViscontiDE FAZIO, Roberto; Al-Hinnawi, Abdel-Razzak; DE VITTORIO, Massimo; Visconti, Paol

THE THERMOELECTRIC, THERMORESISTIVE, AND HYGRORESISTIVE PROPERTIES AND APPLICATIONS OF VAPOR PRINTED PEDOT-CL

Wearable electronics are a valuable tool to increase consumer access to real-time and long-term health care monitoring. The development of these technologies can also lead to major advancements in the field, such as self-charging systems that are completely removed from the electrical grid. However, much of the wearable technology available commercially contain rigid components, use unsustainable synthetic methods, or undesirable materials. The field has thus been moving towards wearables that mimic textiles or use textiles as a substrate. Herein, we discuss the use of oxidative chemical vapor deposition (oCVD) to produce textiles coated with poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) known as PEDOT-Cl. We evaluate the thermoelectric, thermoresistive, and hygroresistive properties of these PEDOT-Cl fabrics. We also explore the applications of these properties by creating humidity sensors, temperature sensors, and thermoelectric generators integrated with clothing. In general, we discuss the process of designing a wearable to best accommodate the desired application

Solar Energy Harvesting to Improve Capabilities of Wearable Devices

The market of wearable devices has been growing over the past decades. Smart wearables are usually part of IoT (Internet of things) systems and include many functionalities such as physiological sensors, processing units and wireless communications, that are useful in fields like healthcare, activity tracking and sports, among others. The number of functions that wearables have are increasing all the time. This result in an increase in power consumption and more frequent recharges of the battery. A good option to solve this problem is using energy harvesting so that the energy available in the environment is used as a backup power source. In this paper, an energy harvesting system for solar energy with a flexible battery, a semi-flexible solar harvester module and a BLE (Bluetooth® Low Energy) microprocessor module is presented as a proof-of-concept for the future integration of solar energy harvesting in a real wearable smart device. The designed device was tested under different circumstances to estimate the increase in battery lifetime during common daily routines. For this purpose, a procedure for testing energy harvesting solutions, based on solar energy, in wearable devices has been proposed. The main result obtained is that the device could permanently work if the solar cells received a significant amount of direct sunlight for 6 h every day. Moreover, in real-life scenarios, the device was able to generate a minimum and a maximum power of 27.8 mW and 159.1 mW, respectively. For the wearable system selected, Bindi, the dynamic tests emulating daily routines has provided increases in the state of charge from 19% (winter cloudy days, 4 solar cells) to 53% (spring sunny days, 2 solar cells). Keywords: energy harvesting; internet of things; physiologicalThis research was funded by the Department of Research and Innovation of Madrid Regional Authority, in the EMPATIA-CM research project (reference Y2018/TCS-5046). This work has been partially supported by the European Union—NextGenerationEU, with the SAPIENTIAE4BINDI project “Proof of Concept” 2021. (Ref: PDC2021-121071-I00/AEI/10.13039/501100011033). This work has been supported by the Madrid Government (Comunidad de Madrid-Spain) under the Multiannual Agreement with UC3M in the line of Excellence of University Professors (EPUC3M26), and in the context of the V PRICIT (Regional Programme of Research and Technological Innovation)

Review of Safety Evaluation of Thermal Wearable Power Harvesting Device

Thermal wearable power harvesting device is developing fast nowadays. The increasing demand on simple and easily handled devices forcing researches to find a better on improving the performance and safety of the devices. Thermal power harvesting is using the heat from the surrounding and human body to generate power. So, the safety precaution needs to be taken in order to keep it safe to use. This paper reviews the use of wearable technology, the basic concept, methods and future of power harvesting technology, ideas of thermoelectric power generators and its related work as well the safety evaluation for international standard of wearable devices

A historical review of the development of electronic textiles

Textiles have been at the heart of human technological progress for thousands of years, with textile developments closely tied to key inventions that have shaped societies. The relatively recent invention of electronic textiles is set to push boundaries again and has already opened up the potential for garments relevant to defense, sports, medicine, and health monitoring. The aim of this review is to provide an overview of the key innovative pathways in the development of electronic textiles to date using sources available in the public domain regarding electronic textiles (E-textiles); this includes academic literature, commercialized products, and published patents. The literature shows that electronics can be integrated into textiles, where integration is achieved by either attaching the electronics onto the surface of a textile, electronics are added at the textile manufacturing stage, or electronics are incorporated at the yarn stage. Methods of integration can have an influence on the textiles properties such as the drapability of the textile