Wearable Kinematic Monitoring System Based on Piezocapacitive Sensors.

Measuring the kinematics of human body movements is important for several biomedical and non-biomedical uses, such as rehabilitation, sports medicine, control of virtual reality systems, etc. This is typically performed employing accelerometers, electrogoniometers, electromagnetic sensors or cameras, which however are usually bulky, or can cause discomfort to the user, or are insufficiently accurate, or require expensive instrumentation. As an alternative to those state-of-the-art systems, stretchable piezocapacitive sensors based on dielectric elastomers (DE) represent a recently described competitive technology, which might enable wearable, lightweight and cost-effective devices.