To keep the world’s infrastructure running, people must work in hazardous environments, including confined spaces, extreme temperatures, and far away from emergency personnel. NextFlex is working with member organizations to improve worker safety in these environments by creating wearable physiological and environmental sensors. In this talk, we will discuss two examples of this work: a wearable chemical sensor created at NextFlex and now being commercialized by Sentinel Occupational Safety and a wearable physiological stress and environmental sensor created in collaboration with NASA.
The wearable chemical sensor detects atmospheric oxygen, volatile organic compounds, and temperature and humidity. It is based on prior work from the confined space monitoring program with AFRL. The current phase of work is updating the sensor to reduce its SWAP-C, and certification for use where flammable gases may be present. This work is supported by a project call led by Aptima-Sentinel Occupational Safety. The wearable physiological stress and environmental sensor detects cortisol in sweat as well as ambient temperature and humidity. The latter is intended for use by NASA astronauts. The smart patch utilizes a flexible hybrid electronic circuit (FHE) with a micro-potentiostat, coupled with a replaceable electrochemical biosensor. The cortisol, temperature, and humidity sensors are all printed, and one of the goals is that replacements could be manufactured on-demand in space. This presentation will describe progress, highlighting ways in which flexible hybrid manufacturing techniques enable unique functionality.