The present invention, in general, relates to flex sensors. More particularly, the present invention relates to a method to set a threshold value for a flex sensor and to improve the readings and accuracy of the flex sensor.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
A flex sensor or bend sensor is specially designed to sense the bending or strain. A flex sensor is a sensor that measures the amount of deflection or bending. Usually, the sensor is stuck to the surface, and resistance of sensor element is varied by bending the surface. The designing of this sensor can be done by using materials like plastic and carbon. The carbon surface is arranged on a plastic strip as this strip is turned aside then the sensor's resistance will be changed. It is in strips which can be affixed on doors, wires and other devices used for detecting perimeter intrusion. Since the resistance is directly proportional to the amount of bend it is used as goniometer, and often called flexible potentiometer. Flex sensor is used in wide areas of research from computer interfaces, rehabilitation, security systems and even music interfaces.
The research paper titled "Design and Implementation of a Wearable Sensor Network System for IoT Connected Safety and Health Applications" authored by Fan Wu, Taiyang Wu, and Mehmet RasitYuce, discusses the wearable sensor network system and device for safety and other health applications. This paper proposes the use of sensors in safe node and health node implementation, and using a raspberry pi connected to a power bank as a complete unit, furthermore this paper discusses how to establish a network for these devices to be worn by people and the data being analyzed. RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) being used and how a BLE and LoRa technologies be used to notify the users for the conditions. It suggests these devices be comprised of sensors be worn by users which would monitor the environmental and the physical parameters of the working conditions.
The research paper titled "User-Oriented Finger-Gesture Glove Controller with Hand Movement Virtualization Using Flex Sensors and a Digital Accelerometer”authored by Monique Bernice H. Flores1, Charles Mholen B. Siloy, Carlos Oppus, Luisito Agustin, used a flex sensor to create a glove controller. The flex sensor used here is a make shift one instead of one’s available commercially. In this paper, a glove with flex sensors is made to control devices; a robotic device is used to demonstrate the capabilities a system like this is capable of. A virtual environment is created around the glove so as to track the user’s hand gestures and movements and specific commands were made which made it possible for the user to be able to control elements inside that. This could be used in different applications.
The research paper titled "Monitoring Neck Posture with Flex Sensors” authored by Yan-RuiGuo, Xiao-Can Zhang, and Ning An, discloses that poor neck postures often lead to neck pains which can take a serious toll on people’s health over time. This paper proposes a mobile neck posture monitoring system with flex sensors, two flex sensors are attached to the neck, a BLEsoc chip will process all data and send to PC or cell phone. When the neck posture of a user is poor, this system will automatically provide warning to this user for better neck health. To simplify experiments, the bad posture is defined as the skull curvature greater than 30. The experimental results showed that the classification result of the system reaches 100% accuracy. Comparing systems based with MEMS sensors including accelerometers, the proposed system avoids wrong skull curvature results caused by the fact that the human body does not coincide with the line of gravity. This study demonstrates strong enough evidences to merit further investigation.
The research paper titled "Wireless Robotic Hand for Remote Operations using Flex Sensor”, authored by Puja Dhepekar, Yashwant G. Adhav, proposed a wireless controlled robotic system for surgical tool handling (picking and placing). In this paper, three types of finger position of the hand are used to control the robotic system with the help of flex sensor movement. Using the different positions of the fingers, resistance of the flex sensor changes, this is used to move the shaft of servo motor that in turn moves the robotic arm as per position of a flex sensor.
The research paper titled "Design and Development of a Cost Effective Flex Sensors for Recognition of International Sign Language Through The Motion of Hand” authored by Praveen Kumar, Ajim Hasan, Amar Dhwaj, Amit Prabhakar, proposes a cost effective bidirectional flex sensor and its general fabrication procedure. Flex sensors along with MEMS accelerometer, Bluetooth module and ArduinoMega is used to create a glove for the recognition of International Sign Language through the motion of the hand. The output generated by data glove was processed by Arduino and its related expression after computation was transferred to the mobile phone. Two types of flex sensors different material i.e. Copper and Aluminium were used.
The research paper titled "Gesture Based Control of Home Appliances for Illiterate and Disability People" authored by T.S. Abirami, A. Induja and G. DheenaDhayalan, proposed a gesture based control of home appliances without the sign language in which flex sensor, XBee transceiver and DC motor are used in order to aid physically challenged people.
In this paper, the transmission module consists of flex sensor, microcontroller, wireless transmitter and display. The microcontroller used is Arduino Uno. The receiver pin in the Arduino receives data from the flex sensor and that information issent to a wireless transmitter. The data are transmitted to wireless receiver through antenna. The reception module consists of a wireless receiver, microcontroller and the home appliances. The receiver pin in the Arduino receives data from wireless receiver. According to the gestures of the flex sensor, the microcontroller is programmed to control the home appliances. The home appliances which should be configured to be controlled are shown on a LCD. For the flow of action, the flex sensor is calibrated initially for every position using microcontroller. The data from flex sensor are transferred to wireless transmitter through microcontroller. It is received by wireless receiver and send to microcontroller which controls home appliances. The gesture made by the physically challenged people is also displayed in LCD. When the sensor is flat the output remains the same as the previous one. The setup gives an easy approach of controlling home appliances for the physically challenged people. The imitations of this paper are the size of the full setup which is very large, further optimization can be implemented on the design of the gesture based gloves. If required the gesture control can also be made to use more number of flex sensor to increase the appliance control respectively.
From all the research papers as afore-mentioned, the uses of flex sensors and different applications of them are well discussed, and disclosed how devices were being controlled by these flex sensors, but in all these use cases and in existing technologies in the art, the trigger or threshold points have to set manually by the programmer/user.
However, in spite of so much technological work and ongoing research and developments in relation to the flex sensor, still the life and accuracy of flex sensors have always been questionable. As the use of flex sensors is endless especially in the field of automation, hence, the present invention works on a method to improve the readings and accuracy of the flex sensor and to make a device that would be able to work efficiently.
In the present invention, the proposed method is used to automate the threshold value trigger and therefore, improving the accuracy of the flex sensors and increasing the life of the flex sensor.
OBJECTIVE OF THE INVENTION
The prime objective of the present invention is to provide a method to set a threshold value for a flex sensor and to improve the readings and accuracy of the flex sensor.
Another objective of the present invention is to provide the method to automatically set the threshold value of the flex sensor.
Another objective of the present invention is to provide the method to improve the threshold value of a flex sensor to increase the life of the flex sensor by allowing minimal bending and thus, curbing out the error of giving irregular values due to deterioration in the flex sensors.
These and other objectives of the present invention will be apparent from the drawings and descriptions herein. Every object of the invention is attained by at least one embodiment of the present invention.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE ACCOMPANYING DRAWINGS
The drawings described herein are for illustrative purposes only of selected embodiments and not all possible implementations, and are not intended to limit the scope of the present disclosure. Further objectives and advantages of this invention will be more apparent from the ensuing description when read in conjunction with the accompanying drawing and wherein:
Figure 1 depicts a schematic view of the block diagram of the present invention; and
Figure 2 shows a schematic view of the flowchart representation of the present invention.
It will be recognized by the person of ordinary skill in the art, given the benefit of this disclosure, that the examples shown in the figures are not necessarily drawn to scale. Certain features or components may have been enlarged, reduced or distorted to facilitate a better understanding of the illustrative aspects and examples disclosed herein. In addition, the use of shading, patterns, dashes and the like in the figures is not intended to imply or mean any particular material or orientation unless otherwise clear from the context.
DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION
The following description includes the preferred best mode of one embodiment of the present invention. It will be clear from this description of the invention that the invention is not limited to these illustrated embodiments but that the invention also includes a variety of modifications and embodiments thereto. Therefore, the present description should be seen as illustrative and not limiting. While the invention is susceptible to various modifications and alternative constructions, it should be understood, that there is no intention to limit the invention to the specific form disclosed, but, on the contrary, the invention is to cover all modifications, alternative constructions, and equivalents falling within the spirit and scope of the invention as defined in the claims.
In any embodiment described herein, the open-ended terms "comprising," "comprises,” and the like (which are synonymous with "including," "having,” and "characterized by") may be replaced by the respective partially closed phrases "consisting essentially of," consists essentially of," and the like or the respective closed phrases "consisting of," "consists of, and the like.
As used herein, the singular forms “a”, “an” and “the” designate both the singular and the plural, unless expressly stated to designate the singular only.
The present invention discloses a method to improve the readings and accuracy of the flex sensor which is an approach to improve the flex sensor’s reading and the accuracy of the trigger points.
An embodiment of the present invention is directed towards a method to set a threshold value for a flex sensor comprising the steps of:
- step 1: connecting a plurality of flex sensors (1) to a bread-board (2) with wires (4) followed by connecting the bread-board (2) to an Arduino controller (3) which controls the output of the flex sensors (1) and connected to a plurality of light emitting diodes;
- step 2: collecting a data from the flex sensors (1) by bending the flex sensors (1) at different angles and at different times of the day;
- step 3: feeding the data of step 2 to calculate the prediction of threshold value followed by the feeding of the data to the Arduino controller (3) and then setting the threshold value accordingly to that for the light emitting diode connected with the Arduino controller (3) to light up; and
- step 4: when the user bends the flex sensors (1) out of the outputs, one of the appropriate one executes.
The figure 1 illustrates a block diagram representation to depict connection of the flex sensors (1) with the bread-board (2) and the Arduino controller (3) via the wires (4) to carry on the proposed method to automatically set a threshold value for the flex sensors (1).The threshold value automatically sets at which resistance of the connection of step 1 allows the light emitting diode connected with the Arduino controller (3) to light up as shown in the flowchart depicted in the figure 2.
Also, the present invention helps in increasing the life of the flex sensor (1) with the help of proposed method as the bending would be very minimal thus increasing the life of the flex sensor (1) and with time the big issue with flex sensor (1) is that it with time starts to deteriorate and give irregular values, the proposed method helps in curbing out that error.
Although the invention has been described with reference to specific embodiments, this description is not meant to be construed in a limiting sense. Various modifications of the disclosed embodiments, as well as alternate embodiments of the invention, will become apparent to persons skilled in the art upon reference to the description of the invention. It is therefore contemplated that such modifications can be made without departing from the spirit or scope of the present invention as defined.

We Claim:

1. A method to set a threshold value for a flex sensor comprising the steps of:
- step 1: connecting a plurality of flex sensors (1) to a bread-board (2) with wires (4) followed by connecting the bread-board (2) to an Arduino controller (3) which controls the output of the flex sensors (1) and connected to a plurality of light emitting diodes;
- step 2: collecting a data from the flex sensors (1) by bending the flex sensors (1) at different angles and at different times of the day;
- step 3: feeding the data of step 2 to calculate the prediction of threshold value followed by the feeding of the data to the Arduino controller (3) and then setting the threshold value accordingly to that for the light emitting diode connected with the Arduino controller (3) to light up; and
- step 4: when the user bends the flex sensors (1) out of the outputs, one of the appropriate one executes.
2. A method to set a threshold value for a flex sensor as claimed in the claim 1, wherein the threshold value automatically sets at which resistance of the connection of step 1 allows the light emitting diode connected with the Arduino controller (3) to light up.