Wearable sensors are beneficial for continuous health monitoring, movement analysis, rehabilitation, evaluation of human performance, and for fall detection. Wearable stretch sensors are increasingly being used for human movement monitoring. Additionally, falls are one of the leading causes of both fatal and nonfatal injuries in the workplace. The use of wearable technology in the workplace could be a successful solution for human movement monitoring and fall detection, especially for high fall-risk occupations. This paper provides an in-depth review of different wearable stretch sensors and summarizes the need for wearable technology in the field of ergonomics and the current wearable devices used for fall detection. Additionally, the paper proposes the use of soft-robotic-stretch (SRS) sensors for human movement monitoring and fall detection. This paper also recapitulates the findings of a series of five published manuscripts from ongoing research that are published as Parts I to V of “Closing the Wearable Gap” journal articles that discuss the design and development of a foot and ankle wearable device using SRS sensors that can be used for fall detection. The use of SRS sensors in fall detection, its current limitations, and challenges for adoption in human factors and ergonomics are also discussed.

The current study presents a nanoscale in silico investigation of strain rate dependency of membrane (phospholipid bilayer) failure when placed under strip biaxial tension with two planar areas. The nanoscale simulations were conducted in the context of a multiscale modelling framework in which the macroscale damage (pore volume fraction) progression is delineated into pore nucleation (number density of pores), pore growth (size of pores), and pore coalescence (inverse of nearest neighbor distance) mechanisms. As such, the number density, area fraction, and nearest neighbor distances were quantified in association with the stress–strain behavior. Deformations of a 1-palmitoyl-2-oleoyl-phosphatidylcholine (POPC) bilayer were performed using molecular dynamics to simulate mechanoporation of a neuronal cell membrane due to injury, which in turn can result in long-term detrimental effects that could ultimately lead to cell death. Structures with 72 and 144 phospholipids were subjected to strip biaxial tensile deformations at multiple strain rates. Formation of a water bridge through the phospholipid bilayer was the metric to indicate structural failure. Both the larger and smaller bilayers had similar behavior regarding pore nucleation and the strain rate effect on pore growth post water penetration. The applied strain rates, planar area, and cross-sectional area had no effect on the von Mises strains at which pores greater than 0.1 nm² were detected (0.509 ± 7.8%) or the von Mises strain at failure (ε _failure = 0.68 ± 4.8%). Additionally, changes in bilayer planar and cross-sectional areas did not affect the stress response. However, as the strain rate increased from 2.0 × 10⁸ s⁻¹ to 1.0 × 10⁹ s⁻¹, the yield stress increased from 26.5 MPa to 66.7 MPa and the yield strain increased from 0.056 to 0.226.