Chapters authored
Fiber Bragg Gratings as e-Health Enablers: An Overview for Gait Analysis Applications
Nowadays, the fast advances in sensing technologies and ubiquitous wireless networking are reflected in medical practice. It provides new healthcare advantages under the scope of e-Health applications, enhancing life quality of citizens. The increase of life expectancy of current population comes with its challenges and growing health risks, which include locomotive problems. Such impairments and its rehabilitation require a close monitoring and continuous evaluation, which add financial burdens on an already overloaded healthcare system. Analysis of body movements and gait pattern can help in the rehabilitation of such problems. These monitoring systems should be noninvasive and comfortable, in order to not jeopardize the mobility and the day-to-day activities of citizens. The use of fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs) as e-Health enablers has presented itself as a new topic to be investigated, exploiting the FBGs’ advantages over its electronic counterparts. Although gait analysis has been widely assessed, the use of FBGs in biomechanics and rehabilitation is recent, with a wide field of applications. This chapter provides a review of the application of FBGs for gait analysis monitoring, namely its use in topics such as the monitoring of plantar pressure, angle, and torsion and its integration in rehabilitation exoskeletons and for prosthetic control.
Part of the book: Applications of Optical Fibers for Sensing
Tracking Li-Ion Batteries Using Fiber Optic Sensors
Batteries are being seen as a key technology for battling CO2 emissions from the transport, power, and industry sectors. However, to reach the sustainability goals, they must exhibit ultrahigh performance beyond their capabilities today. So, it is becoming crucial to develop advanced diagnostic/prognostic tools injected into the battery that could nonintrusively track in time and space its physical and chemical parameters, for ensuring a greater lifetime and therefore lower its CO2 footprint. In this context, a smart battery sensing system with high performance and easy implementation is critically needed for the vital importance of safety and reliability in all batteries. Parameters like temperature (heat flow), strain, pressure, electrochemical events from electrode lithiation to gassing production, refractive index, and SoX battery indicators are of high importance to monitor. Recently, optical fiber sensors (OFS) have shown to be a feasible, accurate, and useful tool to perform this sensing, due to their intrinsic advantages and capabilities (lower invasiveness, multipoint and multiparameter detection, capability of multiplexing being embedded in harsh environments, and fast response). This chapter presents and discusses the studies published regarding the different types of OFS, which were developed to track several critical key parameters in Li-ion batteries, since the first study was reported in 2013.
Part of the book: Smart Mobility