Kobakant's Stocking-Based Stretch Sensor Turns Embroidery Into Valuable Data

Designed to stretch, flex, and distort, this piece of embroidery is a fully-functional low-cost stretch sensor.

Gareth Halfacree
3 years ago β€’ Sensors / Wearables

Soft-circuit specialist Kobakant has published a demonstration of a low-cost multi-dimensional stretch sensor, created by embroidering resistive yarn onto low-cost stocking material.

"A stretch sensor made of skin colored stockings and thin resistive yarn (Bekinox BK50/2) embroidery," Kobakant, founded by Mika Satomi and Hannah Perner-Wilson, writes of its latest low-cost soft-circuit creation. "It is sensitive to stretch and distortion of the main fabric."

This clever stretch sensor is made from a stocking and some resistive yarn. (πŸ“Ή: Kobakant)

In an accompanying video, the sensor is shown being put through its paces. As the stocking material is stretched and warped, so too does the resistive yarn β€” enabling it to feed data back to a central control system. The flexibility of the circuit allows it to be bent, stretched, crushed, and distorted β€” but the simplicity of the circuit means it is only feeding a single reading back.

It's a clever project, but not the simplest low-cost stretch sensor we've seen: That award goes to David Huang, whose own tension sensor design requires little more than a length of string and a pencil.

The sensor's entry in the How To Get What You Want database is available on Kobakant.at, but full details and schematics have not been included.

Gareth Halfacree
Freelance journalist, technical author, hacker, tinkerer, erstwhile sysadmin. For hire: freelance@halfacree.co.uk.
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