Using piezoelectric materials for wearable electronic textiles

Abstract

An open issue for electronic textiles (e-textiles) used for wearable computing is the choice of materials. This paper describes the desirable characteristics of piezoelectric materials for wearable e-textiles, including shape sensing, sound detection, and sound emission. The paper then describes an initial prototype of a glove for user input that employs piezoelectrics to sense the movement of the hands to illustrate the design issues involved in using piezoelectrics.