A safe, wearable soft sensor

Harvard University researchers have developed a soft, non-toxic wearable sensor that unobtrusively attaches to the hand and measures the force of a grasp and the motion of the hand and fingers. The research was published in Advanced Functional Materials and is a collaboration between the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, The Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and Boston Children's Hospital. One novel element of the sensor is a non-toxic, highly conductive liquid solution. "We have developed a new type of conductive liquid that is no more dangerous than a small drop of salt water," said Siyi Xu, a graduate student at SEAS and first author of the paper. "It is four times more conductive than previous biocompatible solutions, leading to cleaner, less noisy data."