Wearable sensors: At the frontier of personalised health monitoring, smart prosthetics and assistive technologies

Wearable sensors have evolved from body-worn fitness tracking devices to multifunctional, highly integrated, compact, and versatile sensors, which can be mounted onto the desired locations of our clothes or body to continuously monitor our body signals, and better interact and communicate with our surrounding environment or equipment. Here, we discuss the latest advances in textile-based and skin-like wearable sensors with a focus on three areas, including (i) personalised health monitoring to facilitate recording physiological signals, body motions, and analysis of body fluids, (ii) smart gloves and prosthetics to realise the sensation of touch and pain, and (iii) assistive technologies to enable disabled people to operate the surrounding motorised equipment using their active organs. We also discuss areas for future research in this emerging field.