Leech-Inspired 3D-Printed Origami Electrodes for Electrophysiology Sensing

Remote healthcare such as wearable blood pressure (BP) monitoring technologies offers a promising method to mitigate the risk of medical personnel and improve patient care quality. Next-generation electrodes for electrophysiology sensing is demanding to improve risk of skin irritation from the conventional wet-gel type electrodes. In this presentation, we report a leech-inspired origami (LIO) dry electrodes based on suction mechanism, architectured for the reliable BP monitoring. A LIO tube generates local soft vacuum for appropriate contact with the human skin. Also, the sensing robot equipped with the LIO sensors measure reliable Electrocardiogram (ECG) signals with a signal-to-noise ratio of 21.7 ± 0.56 dB. Eventually, BP monitoring has been demonstrated by a paired sensing system by combination of ECG with photoplethysmography through human–robot interaction. The average difference of the systolic BP from the sensing robot and that from the conventional sphygmomanometer was 0.03 mmHg on average, indicating that the proposed LIO dry electrodes can monitor BP reliably.