Research
We cooperate with universities, institutes and partners from industry in research projects. Our goal is to create, identify and use new technologies that contribute to wearable products by industrialization of new materials, seamless integration of electronics into textiles, advanced embedded controller and edge computing devices.
Focus of our research activities is the implementation of textile based distributed systems as well as the development and integration of new conductive textile components.
Furthermore, we support research projects through building professional demonstrators and prototypes in the area of smart textiles.
The aim of the work package Flexible Electronics is to demonstrate the viability of graphene and layered materials for applications in flexible electronics and textiles. We do this by developing functional prototypes that perform better and are more reliable than current state-ofthe-art devices, or provide advantages in terms of consumer appeal, business appeal or environmental friendliness.
We carry out our research and development on graphene flakes for printed electronics, and on grown and transferred graphene and layered materials for high-performance flexible devices.
Over the past few years, we have developed a number of new sensors, prototype wearable autonomous devices for health monitoring, interactive printed electronic products based on paper and transparent electrodes to be used in the automotive industry.
Motivation
Although interest in and commitment to their own health is, on the whole, rising across the population, it is often difficult for individuals to implement appropriate measures in their daily lives. Existing products and services are currently often only used by people who already demonstrate good health behaviour.
Aim and approach
The aim of the project is to develop an AI-based, learning assistance system that supports healthy everyday behaviour. To this end, data from wearables and smartphones will be analysed in order to be able to make suggestions – based on situational analyses, behavioural models and a digital twin (virtual representation of a human) – to their users with regard to health-enhancing behaviour. The use of sensor-aided observation and modelling of situations and behavioural patterns is intended to create a wealth of experience between users and AI, which will then serve as a common level of communication between human and AI. Novel AI-based strategy modelling shall make use of a wide range of user data to provide individualised aids to decision-making as well as recommendations for application scenarios, such as healthy nutrition, exercise in everyday life and support in old age.
Innovations and prospects
The new assistance system will make it possible to provide personalised, adaptive behavioural recommendations that are related to people’s relevant experiences and are easy to implement.
Contribution by IAW
- Development of the overall system design (from sensor integration to sensor evaluation and processing in neural networks)
- Development and production of demonstrators for data acquisition
- Development of business models
MicroHub MCU Board
The main board consists of an energy efficient and power saving ARM Cortex M0+ sensor hub with 2x10 stackable pin connectors for an application and a communication shield. A distributed sensor and feedback network could be connected via 2x6 pad interface for textile cable.
Power supply
The system supports any kind of LIP (Lithium Polymer) battery to connect. The kit contains a 190 mAh LIP battery.
Communication Shield
As a standard we provide a combined BLE / SD-card shield. Other shields are available on demand, e.g. WIFI, LoRa or Narrowband IoT.
Sensors
The sensor shield support any kind of sensor modules with SPI/I2C interface. Additionally the MicroHub provides an ADC interface.