Sensing of joint and spinal bending or stretching via a retractable and wearable badge reel

TLDR

Human motions such as joint or spinal bending and stretching provide valuable information for diagnosing, rehabilitating, and preventing orthopedic and neural diseases. The authors propose a lightweight, precise, and durable stretch sensor for spinal monitoring to reduce the risk of long‑term postural habit–induced diseases. They conducted experimental and theoretical studies to define the device’s key features and validated its performance in a spinal laboratory by monitoring spine motions with a commercial inclinometer and hunchback instrument. The badge‑reel–like triboelectric nanogenerator achieved 8 V mm⁻¹ sensitivity, 0.6 mm resolution, low hysteresis, and over 120 000 cycles of durability, and accurately recorded real‑time knee, arm, neck, and waist motions during daily activities and exercise.

Abstract

Human motions, such as joint/spinal bending or stretching, often contain information that is useful for orthopedic/neural disease diagnosis, rehabilitation, and prevention. Here, we show a badge-reel-like stretch sensing device with a grating-structured triboelectric nanogenerator exhibiting a stretching sensitivity of 8 V mm-1, a minimum resolution of 0.6 mm, a low hysteresis, and a high durability (over 120 thousand cycles). Experimental and theoretical investigations are performed to define the key features of the device. Studies from human natural daily activities and exercise demonstrate the functionality of the sensor for real-time recording of knee/arm bending, neck/waist twisting, and so on. We also used the device in a spinal laboratory, monitoring human subjects' spine motions, and validated the measurements using the commercial inclinometer and hunchback instrument. We anticipate that the lightweight, precise and durable stretch sensor applied to spinal monitoring could help mitigate the risk of long-term abnormal postural habits induced diseases.