All-textile sensors for boxing punch force and velocity detection

All-textile-based wearable sensors attract immense interest as a big data collection platform for human motion detection, providing multifunctionality, high sensitivity, and excellent wearing comfort for sports applications. Herein, we demonstrate a flexible bimodal all-textile sensor design with touchless and tactile detection capability via a scalable and cost-effective fabrication route for sensitive motion detection. The slight changes in the surrounding microenvironment such as pressure, and proximity distance can be continuously and simultaneously detected by the bimodal all-textile sensor based on a 3D hierarchical spacer fabric dielectric layer and nickel fabric electrode. The bimodal all-textile sensor exhibits a superior tactile sensing sensitivity (0.33 kPa−1), an ultralow detection limit (0.25 Pa), excellent touchless performance (detection distance of 20 cm, maximum relative capacitance changes of 20%), and comfortable textile properties, such as excellent air breathability (448.77 mm/s)) and moisture permeability (147.11 g/(m2 h)), mechanical stability (> 10,000 cycles), and low manufacturing cost (6.5 $/m2). Our bimodal all-textile sensor with high performance and cost-effectiveness presents substantial advantages for smart textiles and garments used in the intelligent digitalization of physical combat sports training applications.