Wearable

This book reports on advanced topics in the areas of wearable robotics research and practice. It focuses on new technologies, including neural interfaces, soft wearable robots, sensors and actuators technologies, discussing industrially and medically-relevant issues, as well as legal and ethical aspects. It covers exemplary case studies highlighting challenges related to the implementation of wearable robots for different purposes, and describing advanced solutions. Based on the 5th International Symposium on Wearable Robotics, WeRob2020, and on WearRacon Europe 2020, which were both held online on October 13-16, 2020, the book addresses a large audience of academics and professionals working in for the government, in the industry, and in medical centers, as well as end-users alike. By merging together engineering, medical, ethical and industrial perspectives, it offers a multidisciplinary, timely snapshot of the field of wearable technologies.

Wearable technologies – such as smart glasses, smart watches, smart objects, or smart garments – are potential game-changers, breaking ground and offering new opportunities for learning. These devices are body-worn, equipped with sensors, and integrate ergonomically into everyday activities.

This book contains chapters on wearable biomedical sensors and their assistive technologies for promoting behavioral change in medical and health care. Part I reviews several wearable biomedical sensors based on biocompatible materials and nano and micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) technologies in the medical and dental fields. Part II introduces the latest approaches to wearable biosensing using unique devices for various skin targets such as sweat, interstitial fluid, and transcutaneous gases. Part III presents technologies supporting wearable sensors, including soft and flexible materials, manufacturing methods, skin volatile-marker imaging, and energy harvesting devices.

This book contains chapters on wearable biomedical sensors and their assistive technologies for promoting behavioral change in medical and health care. Part I reviews several wearable biomedical sensors based on biocompatible materials and nano and micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) technologies in the medical and dental fields. Part II introduces the latest approaches to wearable biosensing using unique devices for various skin targets such as sweat, interstitial fluid, and transcutaneous gases. Part III presents technologies supporting wearable sensors, including soft and flexible materials, manufacturing methods, skin volatile-marker imaging, and energy harvesting devices.

Wearable exoskeletons are electro-mechanical systems designed to assist, augment, or enhance motion and mobility in a variety of human motion applications and scenarios. The applications, ranging from providing power supplementation to assist the wearers to situations where human motion is resisted for exercising applications, cover a wide range of domains such as medical devices for patient rehabilitation training recovering from trauma, movement aids for disabled persons, personal care robots for providing daily living assistance, and reduction of physical burden in industrial and military applications. The development of effective and affordable wearable exoskeletons poses several design, control and modelling challenges to researchers and manufacturers. Novel technologies are therefore being developed in adaptive motion controllers, human-robot interaction control, biological sensors and actuators, materials and structures, etc. In this book, the authors report recent advances and technology breakthroughs in exoskeleton developments. It will be of interest to engineers and researchers in academia and industry as well as manufacturing companies interested in developing new markets in wearable exoskeleton robotics.

As diverse as tomorrow’s society constituent groups may be, they will share the common requirements that their life should become safer and healthier, offering higher levels of effectiveness, communication and personal freedom. The key common part to all potential solutions fulfilling these requirements is wearable embedded systems, with longer periods of autonomy, offering wider functionality, more communication possibilities and increased computational power. As electronic and information systems on the human body, their role is to collect relevant physiological information, and to interface between humans and local and/or global information systems. Within this context, there is an increasing need for applications in diverse fields, from health to rescue to sport and even remote activities in space, to have real-time access to vital signs and other behavioral parameters for personalized healthcare, rescue operation planning, etc.

Wearable Systems Based Gait Monitoring and Analysis provides a thorough overview of wearable gait monitoring techniques and their use in health analysis. The text starts with an examination of the relationship between the human body’s physical condition and gait, and then introduces and explains nine mainstream sensing mechanisms, including piezoresistive, resistive, capacitive, piezoelectric, inductive, optical, air pressure, EMG, and IMU-based architectures. Gait sensor design considerations in terms of geometry and deployment are also introduced. Diverse processing algorithms for manipulating sensors outputs to transform raw data to understandable gait features are discussed.

The increasing advances in electronics allows smaller and more powerful devices, bringing wearable computing closer to reality. However, most wearable computers are very distinguished and placed on clothes and accessories. This book tries to tackle this phenomenon by introducing a new wearable computing subfield called beauty technology.