Deep Learning-Based Prediction and Compensation of Performance Degradation in Flexible Sensors

Flexible deformation sensors inevitably suffer from sensitivity degradation and severe measurement errors during long-term cyclic stretching due to structural fatigue. Traditional material-level optimizations are costly and lack dynamic adaptability. Herein, we propose an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven predict-and-compensate framework for the online calibration of flexible sensors. To overcome training sample scarcity, a generative adversarial network (GAN) performs temporal data augmentation. Subsequently, a hybrid deep learning framework integrating long short-term memory (LSTM) networks and a Sequence Attention mechanism is employed. This architecture accurately captures both local signal fluctuations and multiscale long-term decay trends, enabling precise multi-step prediction and output compensation. Experimental evaluations validate that this strategy significantly suppresses sensor response drift. Under cyclic loading, an initially substantial relative measurement error of 48.63% plummets to 7.16% post-calibration, with typical errors consistently reduced to the ~1% level. Furthermore, when deployed in a smart glove gesture recognition system, this method successfully restores the recognition accuracy from a fatigue-induced low of 75.73% (after 200 stretch cycles) back to 97.70%. This generative and attention-based deep learning paradigm offers robust, real-time error calibration, providing a highly viable solution for extending the long-term reliability and stability of flexible sensor systems.