Joryan Sennesael wins Student Best Paper Award at IEEE FLEPS 2024
(05-02-2025) At the IEEE International Conference on Flexible Printable Sensors and Systems, researcher Joryan Sennesael won 2nd place for his paper on “Carbon Ink Sensing Patterns for a Contactless Smart Diaper”.
Environmentally Friendly Carbon-Printed Contactless Smart Diapers
This resulted in the publication of A1 paper "An Environmentally Friendly Carbon-Printed Contactless Smart Diaper" in IEEE Sensors Journal.
Nowadays, with the aging population, the number of people in homes for the elderly is dramatically rising. Nearly, all of them suffer from a degree of incontinence and wear diapers on a daily basis, leading to a lot of superabsorbent polymer waste material. Smart diapers increase patient comfort owing to timely diaper changes. At the same time, the absorbent content of smart diapers can be reduced substantially, compared with regular diapers, as less margin for late changes is needed. From the medical perspective, smart diapers also reduce painful incontinence-associated dermatitis (IAD) caused by prolonged exposure to saturated diapers. This article proposes a novel contactless smart diaper system that allows caregivers to remotely read out information about diaper contents. The developed system is based on capacitive coupling to a printed structure in the diaper, including multiple detection zones distributed across its length. By printing the sensing pattern into the diaper in carbon ink, a low-cost, mass producible, and environmentally friendly sensor is obtained. A four-port differential transmission-measurement technique is employed, resulting in a higher system reliability than many existing smart diaper systems relying on impedance measurements only. This article includes both laboratory and in-field measurements to demonstrate the successful detection of moisture.
- Joryan Sennesael, Arno Moerman, Frederick Bossuyt, Bjorn Vandecasteele, Charlotte Raepsaet, Dimitri Beeckman, Hendrik Rogier, Patrick Van Torre, "An Environmentally Friendly Carbon-Printed Contactless Smart Diaper", IEEE Sensors Journal, vol.25, no.2, pp.3309-3319, 2025.
This research is based on the imec-ICON Smart Diapers project from which an EU and US patent ‘Sensing Diaper Content’ followed, invented by Patrick Van Torre and Arno Moerman.
IEEE FLEPS
IEEE International Conference on Flexible Printable Sensors and Systems is intended to provide a forum for research scientists, engineers, and practitioners throughout the world to present their latest research findings, ideas, and applications in the area of Flexible and Printable Sensors and Systems.
IEEE FLEPS 2024 took place in Tampere, Finland from June 30 - July 3, 2024.