A hydroplastic foaming method fabricates graphene aerogels and constructs a tactile sensor to outperform human finger.

Cardiovascular digital health technologies potentially outperform traditional clinical equipment through their noninvasive, on-body, and portable monitoring with mass cardiac data beyond the confines of inpatient settings. However, existing cardiovascular wearables have difficulty with providing medical-grade accuracy with a chronically comfortable and stable patient/consumer device interface for reliable clinical decision-making. Here, we develop an intensive care unit (ICU)–grade breathable cardiac electronic skin system (BreaCARES) for real-time, wireless, continuous, and comfortable cardiac care. BreaCARES enables a novel digital cardiac care platform for health care, outpatient diagnostics, stable intraoperative monitoring during heart surgery, and continuous and comfortable inpatient postoperative cardiac care, exhibiting ICU-grade accuracy while having superior anti-interference stability, portability, and long-term on-skin biocompatibility to the clinically and commercially available cardiac monitors in cardiovascular ICUs.

In the traditional virtual flux estimation for a three-phase pulsewidth modulation rectifier, the integration element causes problems for the initial value and dc bias, and the unstable grid voltage induces a nonconstant flux amplitude. To address these issues, an improved direct power control scheme based on an adaptive sliding mode observer is proposed in this work. The observer employs a sigmoid function as switch function to estimate the grid-side source voltage. Meanwhile, an adaptive compensator instead of pure integral element is also designed to dynamically adjust compensation. The stability of this observer is proved by the Lyapunov function; moreover, simulations and experimental results indicate that this new virtual flux observer substantially improves the observation accuracy based on voltage sensorless control. The application of this strategy successfully suppresses the fluctuation of the dynamic voltage response in the dc bus, eliminating high-frequency noise from the grid side, while simultaneously boosting the power quality.

Flexible and stretchable sensors are emerging and promising wearable devices for motion monitoring. Manufacturing a flexible and stretchable strain sensor with desirable electromechanical performance and excellent skin compatibility plays an essential role in building a smart wearable system. In this paper, a graphene-coated silk-spandex (GCSS) fabric strain sensor is prepared by reducing graphene oxide. The sensor functions as a result of conductive fiber extending and woven structure deforming. The conductive fabric can be stretched towards 60% with high sensitivity, and its performance remains constant after a 1000-cycle test. Based on its superior performance, the GCSS is successfully employed to detect full-range human movement and provide data for deep learning-based gesture recognition. This work offers a desirable method to fabricate low-cost strain sensors for industrial applications such as human movement detection and advanced information science.

Flexible electronics with continuous monitoring ability a extensively preferred in various medical applications. In this work, a flexible pressure sensor based on porous graphene (PG) is proposed for continuous cardiovascular status monitoring. The whole sensor is fabricated in situ by ink printing technology, which grants it the potential for large-scale manufacture. Moreover, to enhance its long-term usage ability, a polyethylene terephthalate/polyethylene vinylacetate (PET/EVA)-laminated film is employed to protect the sensor from unexpected shear forces on the skin surface. The sensor exhibits great sensitivity (53.99/MPa), high resolution (less than 0.3 kPa), wide detecting range (0.3 kPa to 1 MPa), desirable robustness, and excellent repeatability (1000 cycles). With the assistance of the proposed pressure sensor, vital cardiovascular conditions can be accurately monitored, including heart rate, respiration rate, pulse wave velocity, and blood pressure. Compared to other sensors based on self-supporting 2D materials, this sensor can endure more complex environments and has enormous application potential for the medical community.

In a badminton game, dexterous fine hand movements are essential for the player to perform with extraordinary skill. Thus, this paper proposes a smart glove with proper sensing functions for finger pressures and bending angles for this sport to measure the kinematics and kinetics during the forehand grip and backhand grip. Twenty-one pressure sensors and eleven flex sensors are employed to construct the smart glove, and the measured parameters are then visualized to analyze different grip movements. An athlete and an amateur were selected for the gripping experiments and the measurements was recorded by the smart glove. During forehand gripping, although the total power generated by the amateur (33 N) was higher than for the athlete (29 N), the final shot strength was still unsatisfactory due to the disorderly arranged finger flex angle. In backhand gripping, the incorrectly laid index finger reduced the thumb power of the amateur to 3 N, which weakened the control ability and led to a distorted flying trajectory of the shuttlecock. The differences in kinematics and kinetics between the athlete and the amateur can provide a reference for the badminton learners to perform the correct technical movements. By use of this approach, the proposed system may grant trainers and trainees a better approach to analyze the grip movement.