Multi-channel Fabric Based Pressure Mapping Data Acquisition System

摘要

A smart fabric based multichannel pressure mapping Data Acquisition System (DAS) was specially designed to read and visualize real time pressure data from an array of piezoresistive fabric pressure sensor. This DAS is important to enable rapid monitoring of pressure distribution for biomedical engineering applications. A customized pressure mapping circuit using off-the-shelf components has been designed and fabricated. In addition, a pressure mapping algorithm which runs on Arduino platform and MATLAB was developed to continuously read and visualize pressure profile from the fabric pressure sensor. To ensure low component count and simple hardware, the concept of multiplexing has been employed in the hardware architecture and the firmware was written to support this architecture. This approach allows the system to perform even with single processor and single ADC. The reliability of the system was tested with array of fabric pressure sensor using a special portable load cell (Advance Force Gauge by MECMESIN). Pressure profile for each sensor unit matches the sensor resistive load characteristic, repeatability and accuracy of a commercial data acquisition system. The system is suitable for reading slow changing analog signal. If one desired to measure fast changing signal, the same architecture can still be used but specifications of the components must be higher. In conclusion, a smart multichannel pressure mapping Data Acquisition System (DAS) was designed, fabricated and tested. The unit capable of acquiring and visualizing pressure data from the developed sensor array. The speed of the system can be increased by using higher speed components while maintaining the same architecture.