Fabrication and evaluation of a stretchable thermal sensing cushion with multi-arch structure

Stretchable and flexible sensing arrays can facilitate human-computer interaction and biofeedback, such as robots, medical devices, and human-computer interface devices. To meet the demand on perceiving the temperature distributions on varied surface areas with low cost, in this paper, we designed a stretchable and flexible thermal sensing cushion (SFTSC) based on the two-dimensional thermistor array with multi-arch structure. The $8 \times 8$ negative temperature coefficient resistors each with two pins were used as the thermistors. For good stretchability, every conductive textile electrode (CTE) in the SFTSC was fabricated by folding a conductive textile strip with multi-arch structure in an insulated elastic textile substrate. For decreasing the number of the test wires, all thermistors in the SFTSC were arrayed in the shared row-column fashion by inserting two pins of every thermistor into its row CTE and its column CTE, respectively. The performances of the SFTSC were evaluated by temperature sensing experiments of a cup, human hand and sitting posture, and the experimental results showed that the SFTSC with good flexibility and good stretchability could perceive its surface temperature well even its surface area was stretched larger 2.25 times.