Researchers recently developed a comfortable and durable self-powered fabric to help people solve their problems with posture. This invention can be partnered with sensors to help individuals correct their posture in real-time.

As an AZoNano report specifies, posture is a vital part of health. Prolonged poor posture like slouching or leaning to one side can result in pain and discomfort.

 

It has increased the risk of cardiovascular disease, strokes, vision problems, and musculoskeletal diseases.

Because of this risk, there's a need for solutions to help people adjust their posture to avoid such problems and improve students' health and those with sedentary careers.

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Posture
(Photo: Unsplash/Studio Republic)
Researchers said ‘sitting disease’ could be relieved if people could ‘observe their real-time sitting posture’ by wearing a certain type of clothing made by smart textiles.


Self-Powered Fabric

The self-powered fabric was developed using triboelectric nanogenerators or TENGs, which use movements to collect the energy needed to power the posture monitoring sensors.

The data collected by the sensors are processed by an integrated machine learning algorithm that can offer immediate feedback, alerting the wearer when there's a need to adjust posture.  This newly devised technology was detailed in a paper published this week in Nano Research.

According to Kai Dong, the paper author and associate researcher at the Beijing Institute of Nanoenergy and Nanosystems at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, people frequently sit in various poor postures in their everyday life, resulting in pain and discomfort.

The researcher also said the so-called "sitting disease" could be relieved if people could "observe their real-time sitting posture" by wearing a certain type of clothing made by smart textiles.

Essentially, using the self-powered sitting position monitoring vest the researchers developed, wearers can watch their posture change on their screen and make the necessary adjustments.

Developed Long-Term Posture Monitoring

This special fabric is made by knitting nylon fiber together with a conductive fiber. As the person wearing the fabric moves, the material is stretched and compressed.

The continuous movement and the contact between the two fibers generate electricity, a phenomenon identified as "contact electrification."

The technology's developers said what's good about the fabric is that it stretches easily; it's durable, breathable, and washable. More so, it can be worn comfortably, even for long periods, making it ideal for long-term posture monitoring.

The paper's author Zhong Lin Wang, the Hightower Chair of the School of Materials Science and Engineering and the Regents' Professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology in the United States, said, Factors such as comfort and durability are essential for how people are using smart textiles.

Effect on the Wearable Sensors' Comfort

Wang explained that the stretchability, flexibility, and bending ability affect the wearable sensors' comfort. However, added the author, these factors also impact how well the fabric is working. The fabric shows good stretchability because of its knitting structure, which increases its output and generates higher voltage.

Another essential aspect of the fabric's comfort is the dependability of posture monitoring. More so, the sensors are stitched into the fabric directly, in positions along the cervical spine, lumbar spine, and thoracic spine.

Such positions are helping to collect data on the most common slouching positions similar to a humpback posture.

Such data collected by the sensors is then interpreted by a machine learning algorithm, which processes information on how the wearer sits, classifies his sitting position, and monitors how he is correcting his posture when prompted.

Essentially, according to a related EurekAlert! report, developers of this technology said this system could precisely recognize the wearer's posture more than 96 percent of the time.

Related information about the wearable device for posture is shown on Bruce Land's YouTube video below:

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