Student Research Showcase

This work describes the development of Electromyography (EMG) armbands with printed electrodes for human motion monitoring. The armbands utilize screen printing techniques to embed Ag/AgCl electrodes onto the textile, allowing for accurate and efficient monitoring of muscle activity during movement. We controlled electrode diameters and contact pressure with different sizing to find optimum conditions for higher signal quality. The integration of printed electrodes into the design of EMG armbands represents a significant advancement in the field of human motion monitoring, providing a cost-effective and user-friendly solution for capturing and analyzing muscle activity. Furthermore, we connected the armbands with Bluetooth data processing and transmission perk to make our prototype more practical. Then, they showed high-quality EMG signals while gripping motion. Our developed armbands have potential applications in a variety of fields, such as sports performance analysis, rehabilitation, and ergonomics.

Muh Amdadul Hoque is working on pneumatic artificial muscles and pneumatic fabric actuators. Discover a proposed method for the production of fiber shapes pneumatic artificial muscles and showed multiple applications of the fiber shaped actuators.

Fiber, as the fundamental building block of textiles, is essential for creating smart fabric-based actuators. Among the various types of textile-based actuators, magnet-driven actuators have proven to be particularly advantageous due to their biocompatibility and wireless controllability. These types of actuators show great promise for medical applications, such as blood clot cleaning. The curing methodology is a crucial factor in fiber formation, as it affects the fiber's shape. While heat curing typically requires a lengthy curing time of several minutes to half an hour, instant curing using UV light suffers from material transparency issues. In this study, we combined both UV-curing and heat-curing to achieve instant fiber formation with a 3D printing setup. Our method enabled the formation of magnetic fibers with a diameter as fine as 500 um, and the fiber solution (or ink) can also be used for 3D printing purposes in the future.

We proposed a contact pressure prediction model for prototyping wearable armband to achieve the required pressure considering wearable device and wear comfort.

A senior design project tasked with evaluating current methods of induction-based wireless energy transfer. The end goal of the project is to successfully integrate a wireless charging receiver onto clothing to power wearable devices.

Developed mechanical snaps and carried out durability tests to evaluate electrical resistance.

Connectors were 3D printed and integrated within the textile network using three different interconnect technologies. Mechanical and durability tests were performed to test durability against i2c and USB protocols.