A Smart Textile System to Detect Urine Leakage

In this paper a wearable system with a sensor embroidered on a textile substrate to detect urine leaks is presented. The system consists of a moisture textile capacitive sensor together with the signal conditioning and its wireless transmission to the cloud. The proposed system has been integrated on underwear and hospital sheet to detect the urine leakage on the diaper users and critical ill patient, respectively. The methodology used by the microcontroller to measure the sensor value is a charge/discharge method. The information is visualised through a computer or smartphone, where can be seen the current state of the sensor. The system has a warning set up to communicate any urine leakage. The experimental results show the functionality of the proposed system which could supply a new tool to hospitals, nursing homes or other institutions to detect when the patient diaper or sheet need to be removed. This tool can optimise the hospital protocol and improve the patient quality of life.