Fiber Sensors
Fiber Sensors
a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t
Article history: Human motion monitoring is significant for professional athletes who desire to improve their perfor-
Received 8 December 2017 mance in sports. In this study, we have fabricated a wearable graphene-coated fiber sensor and achieved
Received in revised form 10 February 2018 the monitoring of the key motions during playing basketball and soccer. Most of body movements even
Accepted 12 March 2018
the subtle ones, could be accurately identified by the sensor. The recorded sensing data indicated the
Available online 16 March 2018
ultrahigh sensitivity and a very wide sensing range. The high reproducibility and fast response ability
demonstrated during the measurements shows that the as-fabricated sensors have the great potentials
Keywords:
in the applications of sports motion monitoring.
Graphene-coated fiber
Wearable sensor © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Human motion
Sports
Sensitivity
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sna.2018.03.011
0924-4247/© 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
J. Zhang et al. / Sensors and Actuators A 274 (2018) 132–140 133
2. Fabrication
Fig. 6. Resistance variation in the bending fiber during the bending and releasing
process.
the fiber under various bending angles. The results shown in Fig. 6
indicate that we could detect more than 150◦ of bend change using
Fig. 5. a) The cycling test of the fiber under a strain of 50%, b) A zoomed-in view of
the fiber. These features make it possible to detect the activities
the cycling test. of large human joints, such as the knee and elbow. A hysteresis is
observed. So there is a few differences between the performances
of the bending and releasing process.The hysteresis is very low and
cycles (stretching and releasing). The maximum relative resistance the original resistance of the fiber sensor can be finally recovered
of the fiber was stable at about 1.2. We selected five cycles (from after releasing it from strain. We think the hysteresis observed is
1601 to 1605) from the 2000 cycles for demonstration purposes, mainly related to the friction between the PE fiber winding and
as shown in Fig. 5b. From the zoomed-in view of the cycle, we can silicone gel substrate. The friction hinders the fiber from timely
observe periodic changes in relative resistance. Waveform changes recovery to the unstrained state after the substrate releasing, thus
were not obvious during the five cycles. This indicated that the inducing the hysteresis of the fiber itself [16].
performance of the fiber was stable. The cycling test of bending was performed from 0◦ to 150◦ . The
curves of the various bending times (from 1 to 2000) are shown in
3.2. Bending testing Fig. 7. There was little difference between the curves, so the fiber
showed high bending stability. Compared to the stretching test, the
The bending ability of the fiber is of great concern for human relative resistance changed more smoothly due to the silicone gel
motion monitoring in sports. We carved a groove on the silicone substrate.
gel substrate to fix the fiber (inset in Fig. 6). Thus, the fibers could
be bent together with the silicone gel substrate. The bending angle 3.3. Torsion testing
is defined in the inset of Fig. 6. The fiber was also connected to
the probers of the costant current source meter by copper wires. In order to implement the torsion test, we used a bracket to
The two ends of the silicone gel were pressed to cause it to bend, fix the fiber sensor, as shown in Fig. 8a. One end was fixed at the
which caused the bending and stretching of the fibers, resulting bottom of the bracket, while the other end was fixed at the top and
in resistance changes. In this way, we could test the changes in could be rotated. The bracket was marked with a scale to indicate
J. Zhang et al. / Sensors and Actuators A 274 (2018) 132–140 135
Fig. 11. The signals of elbow. Fig. 13. The signals of wrist rotation.
Fig. 15. Response curves of wearable sensors on the wrist, shoulder, and elbow.
Fig. 17. The motion of a) wrist pressing, b) no wrist pressing, and (c) the signals of
the wearable sensor on the wrist.
Fig. 20. The signals of the wearable sensors on the knee, ankle, and elbow for the
entire kicking process.
5. Conclusion
Acknowledgments
References
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Biographies
Yong Zuo is an Associate Professor at the State Key Laboratory of Information
Photonics and Optical Communications (IPOC), Beijing University of Posts and
Jinnan Zhang received a Ph.D. degree in electromagnetic and microwave technol- Telecommunications (BUPT), China. He received his Ph.D. degree in electronic engi-
ogy from Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications (BUPT), China. He neering from Queen Mary University of London (QMUL), UK. His current research
is currently a lecture with the State Key Laboratory of Information Photonics and interest includes graphene, nanometer material sensing and wearable sensors.
Optical Communications (IPOC, BUPT) for intelligent sensing. His research interests
include human health monitoring and management, nanometer material optical Xueguang Yuan received the Ph.D. degree in electromagnetic and microwave tech-
fiber sensing, and DSP. nology from Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications (BUPT), China. He is
currently a lecturer with the State Key Laboratory of Information Photonics and Opti-
Yanghua Cao received a bachelor’s degree in information engineering from Bei- cal Communications (IPOC, BUPT). His research interests include health monitor,
jing University of Posts and Telecommunications (BUPT), China. He is currently a optical sensing, and DSP.
postgraduate student pursuing a master’s degree in intelligent sensing with the
State Key Laboratory of Information Photonics and Optical Communications (IPOC, Qi Wang received a Ph.D. degree from Beijing University of Posts and Telecommu-
BUPT). His research interests include nanometer material optical fiber sensing, social nications, China, in 2005. He is currently a Professor in the Institute of Information
information construction and management, and DSP. Photonics and Optical Communications. He is the author of more than 100 publica-
tions in international journals and conference proceedings. His research interests
Min Qiao received the bachelor’s degree in computer science and technology from include wearable sensors, two-dimensional materials, self-rolled-up micro/nano
Jinan University (JNU), China. She is currently studying for a master’s degree in technology, and III-V semiconductor photoelectronic devices.
the State Key Laboratory of Information Photonics and Optical Communications