Jingwen Zhu
Researcher, Designer, Engineer
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BioWeave

BioWeave

Weaving Thread-Based Sweat-Sensing On-Skin Interfaces

There has been a growing interest in developing and fabricating wearable sweat sensors in recent years, as sweat contains various analytes that can provide non-invasive indications of various conditions in the body. Although recent HCI research has been looking into wearable sensors for understanding health conditions, textile-based wearable sweat sensors remain underexplored. We present BioWeave, a woven thread-based sweat-sensing on-skin interface. Through weaving single-layer and multi-layer structures, we combine sweat-sensing threads with versatile fiber materials. We identified a design space consisting of colorimetric and electrochemical sensing approaches, targeting biomarkers including pH, glucose, and electrolytes. We explored 2D and 3D weaving structures for underexplored body locations to seamlessly integrate sweat-sensing thread into soft wearable interfaces. We developed five example applications to demonstrate the design capability offered. The BioWeave sensing interface can provide seamless integration into everyday textile-based wearables and offers the unobtrusive analysis of health conditions.

Keywords: biosensing, sweat sensing, on-skin interfaces, weaving, wearables, textiles

Project Credits: Jingwen Zhu, Nadine El Nesr, Christina Simon, Nola Rettenmaier, Kaitlyn Beiler, Cindy Hsin-Liu Kao

Publication: Proceedings of The ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST) 2023 PDF | DOI | Project Page

Press Image Kit: Download Here (License: CC by-NC-SA 4.0)

Selected Press

We defined a 5-dimensional BioWeave design space for fabricating thread-based sweat sensors and integrating them into a variety of weaving patterns and structures targeting different biomarkers and body locations.

We present the BioWeave fabrication approach of dyeing colorimetric sweat-sensing threads and coating electrochemical sensing threads.

We demonstrate applications including (A1) Under eye cell patterned pH and glucose sensor, (A2) Under arm glucose sensor, (A3) Forehead and ear glucose sensor with floating warp, (A4) Between chest 3D pH sensor, (A5) Between toes pH sensor.