Smart Glove Integrated with Tunable MWNTs/PDMS Fibers Made of a One-Step Extrusion Method for Finger Dexterity, Gesture, and Temperature Recognition.

Abstract

Flexible wearable devices have proven to be emerging tools for motion monitoring, personal healthcare, and rehabilitation training. The development of a multifunctional, flexible sensor and the integration of sensors and a smart chip for signal reading and transmission play a critical role in building a smart wearable device. In this work, a smart glove based on multiwalled carbon nanotubes/poly(dimethylsiloxane) (MWNTs/PDMS) fibers is developed for gesture and temperature recognition. First, the well-tunable, stretchable, and thermal-sensitive MWNTs/PDMS fibers are fabricated via a facile and cost-effective one-step extrusion method. The obtained fibers exhibit an outstanding linear relationship between resistance change and strain in the range of 0-120% and excellent cyclic stability and durability after 20 000 cycles of 50% tension. They also present a linear relationship of resistance change and temperature of 0.55% °C-1 with a correlation coefficient of 0.998 in the range of 0-100 °C. The fibers, as parts of wearable sensors, are then integrated into a smart glove along with a custom-made data acquisition chip to recognize finger dexterity, gestures, and temperature signals and output them through a screen display, an audio system, and Bluetooth transmission. The highly integrated, low-cost, and multifunctional glove holds great potential for various applications, such as sign language recognition, rehabilitation training, and telemedicine in the Internet-of-Things era.