Textile-based mechanoreceptor array with tunable pressure thresholds for mutli-dimensional detection in healthcare monitoring

Abstract

Mimicking human skin mechanoreceptors grouped by various thresholds creates an efficient system to detect interfacial stress between skin and environment, enabling precise human perception. Specifically, the detected signals are transmitted in the form of spikes in the neuronal network via synapses. However, current efforts replicating this mechanism for health-monitoring struggle with limitations in flexibility, durability, and performance, particularly in terms of low sensitivity and narrow detection range. This study develops novel soft mechanoreceptors with tunable pressure thresholds from 1.94 kPa to 15 MPa. The 0.455-mm-thin mechanoreceptor achieves an impressive on–off ratio of over eight orders of magnitude, up to 40,000 repeated compression cycles and after 20 wash cycles. In addition, the helical array reduces the complexity and port count, requiring only two output channels, and a differential simplification algorithm enables two-dimensional spatial mapping of pressure. This array shows stable performance across temperatures ranging from − 40 to 50 °C and underwater at depths of 1 m. This technology shows significant potential for wearable healthcare applications, including sensor stimulation for children and the elderly, and fall detection for Parkinson’s patients, thereby enhancing the functionality and reliability of wearable monitoring systems.