Epidermal and Body-Worn Antennas

The work in this thesis focuses on flexible body-worn Electromagnetic Band-gap structures to remove body interference on the functionality of antennas and with compact UHF sensor tags designed for epidermal attachment and which are used in assisted living applications. Two passive sensing designs based on UHF RFID technology are presented. The first tag is mounted on the hard palette of the mouth and detects tongue position, while the second is a skin-mounted strain gauge. Both designs are proposed for wheelchair or computer mouse control applications. Measurements show the sensors can communicate over short ranges comparable with the distance expected between a patient’s mouth or face and a reader antenna. The mouth sensor is demonstrated to act as a tongue controlled switch, while the epidermal sensor is intended for eyebrow twitch control. Tests indicate both designs have a useful and repeatable sensing function, with more than 3 dB isolation in the switching case and approximately 0.25 dBm per percentage stretch in the strain gauge. Accurate arm and mouth models are used to simulate and validate the measurement results. Secondly, an investigation of how the system users can be trained with an appropriate repetition scheme to use the tongue control system efficiently are considered. The training method has been tested on 3 users and the improvement on the efficiency of using the system is also presented

Skin-Mounted RFID Sensing Tattoos for Assistive Technologies

UHF RFID technology is presented that can facilitate new passive assistive technologies. Tongue control for human computer interfaces is first discussed where a tag is attached to the hard palate of the mouth and the tag turn-on power is observed to vary in response to tongue proximity. Secondly, a stretchable tag is fabricated from Lycra fabric that contains conducting silver fibres. The application of strain to the elastic tag again causes the required power at the reader to activate the tag to vary in proportion. This elastic tag is proposed as a temporary skin mounted strain gauge that could detect muscle twitch in the face or neck of an otherwise physically incapacitated person. Either design might be applied to the steering function of a powered wheelchair, or to facilitate the control of a computer mouse. Better than 3dB isolation is achieved in the tongue switching case and approximately 0.25dBm per percentage stretch is observed for the strain gauge

Passive wireless tags for tongue controlled assistive technology interfaces

Tongue control with low profile, passive mouth tags is demonstrated as a human–device interface by communicating values of tongue-tag separation over a wireless link. Confusion matrices are provided to demonstrate user accuracy in targeting by tongue position. Accuracy is found to increase dramatically after short training sequences with errors falling close to 1% in magnitude with zero missed targets. The rate at which users are able to learn accurate targeting with high accuracy indicates that this is an intuitive device to operate. The significance of the work is that innovative very unobtrusive, wireless tags can be used to provide intuitive human–computer interfaces based on low cost and disposable mouth mounted technology. With the development of an appropriate reading system, control of assistive devices such as computer mice or wheelchairs could be possible for tetraplegics and others who retain fine motor control capability of their tongues. The tags contain no battery and are intended to fit directly on the hard palate, detecting tongue position in the mouth with no need for tongue piercings

Battery-free wireless assistive tongue controlled switches and joystick technology

This paper will present an outline of new wireless assistive tongue controlled switching technology with an anticipated application for tetraplegic people to control wheel chairs or computer mouses. A particular benefit of the mouth tag system proposed is that no battery, or significant electronics needs to be placed inside the mouth

Epidermal Passive RFID Strain Sensor for Assisted Technologies

An epidermal passive wireless strain sensor using RFID tags is presented. The tag is intended to detect eyebrow or neck skin stretch where paraplegic patients have the capability to tweak facial muscles. The tag is designed on a Barium Titanate loaded PDMS substrate and is assessed to demonstrate the strain gauge sensitivity and repeatability as a function of skin stretch

Electromagnetic bandgap (EBG) structures with TiO2 substrate

Thickness of structures plays a big role on body-worn antenna systems in terms of conformity. On EBG structure design where it is placed onto body, using a high permittivity substrate such as TiO2 brings an opportunity to decrease the thickness of the structure

Passive stretchable RFID tag

This paper illustrates the idea of passive strain gauge wireless sensors. The sensors use the principle of detuning slots as a surrounding patch is stretched. The application of these devices could be as control actuators for disabled peopl

PENGEMBANGAN PERANGKAT LUNAK UNTUK MENCARI NILAI OPTIMAL DESAIN PENUKAR KALOR JENIS SHELL AND TUBE

Sistem komputerisasi yang diterapkan tidak hanya bertujuan untuk mempermudah sistem kerja pada sebuah perusahaan tetapi juga untuk mencari nilai optimal sebuah desain agar lebih efisien. Pada penelitian ini akan dirancang sebuah perangkat lunak dengan menggunakan bantuan bahasa pemrograman Visual Basic 2010 yang dapat digunakan untuk mempermudah dalam merancang desain shell and tube. Metodologi yang digunakan dalam perancangan desain shell and tube ini berupa tahapan algoritma. Tahapan algoritma dijadikan panduan dalam membuat bahasa pemrogaman Visual Basic 2010 yang berupa input, proses, dan output. Dari software yang dibuat ada dua jenis shell and tube yang bisa dirancang, yaitu jenis shell and tube tanpa sisipan dan dengan sisipan plat kedalam pipa. Bentuk sisipan plat yang bisa dirancang dalam software ini yaitu sisipan plat longitudinal, sisipan plat longitudinal dengan tambahan lubang, dan sisipan plat puntir dengan sudut puntir (α: 15.30, 24.40, dan 34.40). Kata kunci : Shell and tube, Sisipan plat, Visual Basic 2010, Desain optimal

Accurate RFID Strain Gauges for Skin Mounting

The stability of response with time is assessed for an elastic RFID tag acting as a strain gauge sensor. The design uses conducting Lycra to provide the metallic layer and the substrate is formulated from elastic PDMS material loaded with barium titanate to increase the relative permittivity. The tag is capable of 20% longitudinal strain and offers an almost linear response with negligible drift over time

RFID transfer tattoo tags and Assisted Living

This article consists of a collection of slides from the author's conference presentation. Some of the specific areas/topics discussed include: concept of tongue touch and proximity sensing RFID has been shown to work in the mouth. Future work will develop multi-chip tags of appropriate size to fit on hard palate. RFID transponder IDs provide multiplexing for sensors. Systems should be cost effective and disposable and current work on printing technologies is supporting this. Ultimately, multiple sensing mouth tags for speech pathology could assess tongue placement during speech. Current solutions require wire looms to pass through patient's mouth and disrupt speech