Highly wearable wireless wristband for monitoring pilot cardiac activity and muscle fine movements

Abstract

Pilots and astronauts can generally experiment high stress during their working activity since they have to manage in a short time a large number of tasks usually in extreme conditions. Moreover, in case of fighter pilots, the management of the stress is even more crucial and it can represent the first cause of accident or death. In this scenario, the real time monitoring of different parameters such as heart rate, ventilation rate, oxygen saturation, and muscle reactivity represents a unique method to collect the information that can activate safe procedures and reduce the danger or train to manage these situations. At the same time, it is fundamental to provide sensing systems that have to minimize the discomfort of the pilot. The usage of bulky devices in fact can hinder the normal activity of the pilot or even can result dangerous for his safeness. For this reason, the implementation of fully wearable sensing systems are mandatory in order to create a smart invisible network that does not affect the pilot movements. In this work, we present a wireless, fully wearable wristband equipped with ultra-thin flexible PVDF-TrFE pressure sensor and highly stretchable strain gauge sensors. The devices are deployed inside or above the wristband avoiding any sense of discomfort or stiffness of the arm. The wearable system can detect the cardiac activity of the pilot without the need of a tight contact with the skin and the fine movements of the hand can be collected to determine the reactivity of the pilot during the flight.