Packaged Elastomeric Optical Fiber Sensors for Healthcare Monitoring and Human-Machine Interaction

Elastomeric polymer optical fiber (EPOF) enabled flexible optical sensors have been attracting intensive research interest due to their excellent stretchability, sensing performance, and anti-electromagnetic interference. However, a soft EPOF without effective protection tends to be damaged, which may undermine its long-term stability, and thus, limit its practical applications. In this work, a strategy for packaging a section of EPOF is proposed, a light-emitting diode (LED), and a photodiode (PD) into a stretchable and flexible silicone patch for both healthcare and human-machine interaction applications. The silicone package not only protects the EPOF from environmental disturbance, providing a compact sensing approach for conformal attachment on flexible or curved surfaces but also offers an effective manner to adjust the sensitivity and working range of the EPOF sensors. Typically, an EPOF sensor is sensitive to pressure, strain, or bending. As a proof-of-concept demonstration, a laryngoscope equipped with a packaged EPOF sensor that can bear a pressure of 60 MPa is developed. It can effectively avoid teeth damage by real-time monitoring the contact force during the operation. Furthermore, a data glove with five packaged EPOF sensors for hand gesture recognition and remote control of a micro-vehicle is fabricated. A packaged elastomeric optical fiber sensor is developed by packaging the elastomeric fiber and the LED/PD together into a flexible silicone patch. Such packaged sensor is sensitive to stretching, pressing and bending, and shows high durability and stability. Using such sensors, a smart laryngoscope that can detect bite force and a data glove that can remote control a robotic hand/car based on gesture recognition are demonstrated.image