Posture classification via wearable strain sensors for neurological rehabilitation

Stroke and other neurological accidents account for a wide fraction of the healthcare costs in industrialised societies. The last step in the chain of recovery from a neurological event often includes motor rehabilitation. While current motion-sensing technologies are inadequate for automated monitoring of rehabilitation exercises at home, conductive elastomers are a novel strain-sensing technology which can be embedded unobtrusively into a garment's fabric. A sensorized garment was realized to simultaneously measure the strains at multiple points of a shirt covering the thorax and upper limb. Supervised learning techniques were employed to analyse the strain measures in order to reconstruct upper-limb posture and provide real-time feedback on exercise progress.