E-textile capacitive electrodes: Fabric or thread: designing an E-textile cushion for sitting posture detection

Back pain is one of the most common illnesses in Western civilizations. Office work and lack of motion can lead to deterioration over time. Many people already use seat cushions to improve their posture during work or leisure. In this work, we present an E-Textile cushion. This seat cushion is equipped with capacitive proximity sensors that track the proximity and motion of the sitting user and distinguish up to 7 postures. Giving a user immediate feedback on the posture can facilitate more healthy behavior. We evaluated a number of different electrode setups, materials, and classification methods, leading to a maximum accuracy of 97.1%.