Development of Flexible Smart Fabric Sensor for Wearable Electrocardiogram

Smart electronic textiles which represent a new model for generating novel solutions for integrating electronics into fabrics or garments able to sense outer conditions or stimuli, reply and adapt behaviour to them in an intelligent way and exhibit a challenge in several fields such as health, sport, automotive and aerospace. Intelligent textiles may show health monitoring systems that greatly benefit from the integration of electronics in textile materials.The main purpose of electronic textiles is to become a part of everyday garments. Equipping the ready-made clothing with soft, flexible and comfortable structural components having different functions such as transforming into a structure with sensing properties makes it the most appropriate environment for the emergence of smart / electronic textiles. In this study, a flexible smart fabric sensor was developed and a smart garment was produced to detect the electrical activity of a human heart for electrocardiogram monitoring (ECG). The smart garment that displays heartbeats offers a different perpective for wearable electronic textiles that incorporate textile-based sensors instead of external electrodes connected to the body.