Project: FLOW - Smart Textile
This is the template for projects
What is FLOW?
FLOW is a project that aims to measure the amount a baby drinks while breastfeeding. The project. This is to give mothers and docters an idea if the baby is drinking enough. Since a lot of mothers do not breast feed because they can not measure how much the baby drinks. This is especially the case when a baby is not growing according to the normal rate. The project is a collaboration between the University of Twente and the University of Wageningen.
What did I do? - Part 1
In the first stages of the project I gave technical support. In this first stage we researched potential methods and made quick setups to test of it was feasible. The goal was the find a way that was inopptrusive but could give an accurate measure the milk flow. In the end the conclussion was that the most promising method was trying to measure the volume of the babies stomoach. This would be done by measure the curcumference of the stomach with a smart romper.
What did i do? - Part 2
During the seconds part I researched what methods there are to measure the stomach circumference, with use of a smart romper. I looked at conductive 3D print fillament, conductive wire/fabric, stretch sensor and Respiratory inductance plethysmography (RIP). I tested these sensors/materials on how accurate, linear and repeatable they are. To test this I made a vice setup that could slowly stretch the sensors so I have the known length. I would test the materials for a short time per posistion and slowly increased and than decreased the length. I would then plot the data and see if the sensor was linear and repeatable.
End result
The end result was that the stretch sensor was the most reliable, also because i was allready callibrated. So for the first prototype this was implemented in the smart romper. But the smart textile or conductive wire did seem promosing. Since thus would be easy in production and could be used in a lot of different applications. But do to the limited scope of the project I could not properly test this, since there are a lot of variables when using this method. In the end a smart romper was made with a stretch sensor was developed together with Saxion.