Ubiquitous Embroidered Electrodes: An Open-Source Platform for Biopotential Measurement

Faisal Rehman, Hui Huang, Soroush Zare, Ye Sun

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Keywords: Embroidered electronics, open-source platform, biopotential measurement, dry, contact, and ECG.

Abstract: Biopotential measurement, including electrocardiograph (ECG), electroencephalograph (EEG), electromyograph (EMG), etc., is a generic tool for health monitoring, diagnosis, human-robot interface, etc. This paper presents an open-source platform for designing and fabricating dry-contact textile electrodes using programmable embroidery, which provides an accessible tool for ubiquitously embroidering textile electrodes on fabrics according to users’ needs. Our method allows for precise control of geometric parameters, including stitch pattern and filling density, to optimize electrode performance. The results demonstrate that by varying the filling density of conductive threads, the electrode impedance can be systematically controlled. The experimental results showed that our embroidered electrodes achieved low skin-electrode impedance. In real-time ECG monitoring, these electrodes produced high-quality signals, which are comparable to gel electrodes. In addition, these electrodes can be quickly embroidered onto different fabric substrates such as clothes, sheets, pillows, etc., without the need for extra fabrication steps. These findings validate our platform as a feasible method for producing cost-effective, comfortable, reliable embroidered electrodes suitable for long-term wearable health monitoring. We open source the platform to make it accessible to the research community.

Track: 4. Flexible, stretchable, and imperceptible electronics for sensors and systems

NominateReviewer: Faisal Rehman, [e-mail] (for serving as a BSN reviewer not reviewer for this paper)

Submission Number: 156