ブラジル・ポルトガルのグループとの共同研究の成果が Optics Letters に掲載

光ファイバヒューズ現象後のプラスチック光ファイバを用いた屈曲計測に関する論文が Optics Letters に掲載されました。本成果は、ブラジルのエスピリトサント連邦大学とポルトガルのアヴェイロ大学およびリスボン大学との共同研究によるものです。

A. G. Leal-Junior, A. Frizera, H. Lee, Y. Mizuno, K. Nakamura, C. Leitão, M. F. Domingues, N. Alberto, P. Antunes, P. André, C. A. F. Marques, and M. J. Pontes, “Design and characterization of curvature sensor using fused polymer optical fibers,” Opt. Lett., vol. 43, no. 11, pp. 2539-2542 (2018).

This letter demonstrates the application of polymer optical fibers (POFs) damaged by the fiber fuse effect to curvature sensing and dynamic angular monitoring. The curvature sensing performance using the fused-POF is compared to POF without the fuse effect. Both POFs are submitted to angles of up to 90 degrees in flexion/extension cycles with angular velocities ranging from 0.48 to 5.61 rad/s. The fused POF is found to show higher performance with respect to sensitivity, correlation coefficient with linear regression, and hysteresis. For instance, at the angular velocity of 0.48 rad/s, the fused POF shows > 3 times higher sensitivity and significantly lower hysteresis than those of the non-fused POF. In addition, the fused POFs have lower cross-sensitivity and hysteresis variations on the tests with different angular velocities. These results indicate that the fused POFs are potential candidates to develop curvature sensors with various advantages over non-fused POFs, for applications such as gait analysis and wearable robotics.