Evaluation of Textile-Based Wearable Force Sensors for Functional Clothing Applications

On-body force sensing can provide beneficial information used in garment design and performance evaluation for functional clothing and wearable technology applications. However, not all sensors are alike or suitable for wearable and body sensing scenarios. Some sensors are not suitable due to wearability factors such as being conformable to the body's shape and size (complex geometry) or do not meet the force or pressure profile requirements for on-body sensing. In this study, we investigate and report the performance of two textile-based force sensors intended to be used for on-body sensing scenarios, to better inform sensor performance and selection for specific application requirements for improved wearable sensing accuracy. Two types of entirely textile-based sensors (Figure 1 a-b) were fabricated for evaluation. Overall, the Eeonyx Pressure Sensing fabric sensor had better performance and outperformed in 4 out of 5 sensor metric categories compared to the Eeonyx Conductive fabric sensor.