Interlocking integration of elastic strain sensor yarn enables smart and distributed sensing in healthcare clothing
Multi-point sensing is critical for accurate and complete health monitoring in wearable technology, yet current electronic sensors struggle to achieve robust multi-point sensing across the human body. This work presents distributed sensing in clothing via interlocking integration of an elastic strain sensor yarn for smart healthcare. The double-covered elastic strain sensor yarn exhibits a stretchability of up to 170% and a gauge factor of 414, and is seamlessly integrated into clothing to form a durable sensor-clothing interlocking structure. The resulting sensor-integrated fabric is breathable, washable, and abrasion-resistant. A wearable respiratory monitoring belt was developed for assessing chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), with sensing data comparable to commercial portable devices. Furthermore, smart clothing with distributed sensing was developed to monitor motor symptoms of Parkinson's disease (PD), achieving a high accuracy of 96.67% as confirmed by deep learning algorithms. These results demonstrate promising potential for wearable healthcare systems, addressing the limitations of rigid, fixed-position sensors and thin-film devices that suffer from poor wearability and discomfort when multiple units are integrated.