Abstract:

Nowadays, the need for wearable sensors is increasing significantly in research and technology as they serve for manifold applications including medical diagnosis, ambient assisted living, mobility tracking, sports and rehabilitation. Internet of Things (IoT), wireless technologies, low-power electronic and flexible nanotechnology are therefore significantly driving the innovations in this field. Challenges thereby are mainly miniaturization, conformity and flexibility as well as signal processing and interpretation of the measured data.

Flexible and stretchable sensors have a light-weight, can be easily integrated and can better interface to the human skin. They can be used together with low-power electronics to realize sensor systems for monitoring human vital signs as well as monitoring of human activity in an efficient manner.

In this invited talk, we provide in the first part a review of the latest developments in flexible and wearable sensors based on carbonaceous nanomaterials and give a detailed insight about their sensing principles, technological aspects and applications as body attached sensors. In the second part we focus on an important non-invasive method, which is impedance spectroscopy, which is an efficient and safe method useful for tracking physiological changes and measurements on human organs. Bioimpedance spectroscopy has a great potential for use in medical diagnosis and human-activity monitoring.