FAQ

At their core, our sensors measure angular displacement. That is, they output an angle that is linearly proportional to the amount of bending induced. Please see the demonstration videos on the home page to get a better understanding of our sensors in action.

Please see our theory manual for a full explanation.

Yes, our sensors have sub-degree resolution and do not suffer from drift.

Our sensors are very durable. We’ve tested our sensors to millions of cycles without failure or drift.

Silicones loaded conductive and dielectric materials.

There are an incredible number of applications for our technology that span automotive, healthcare, IOT, robotics, consumer electronics, motion capture and many industrial market segments. One of our customers, Claris Healthcare, uses our sensors for remote orthopedic patient monitoring. Other areas of strong interest come from consumer electronics & IOT such as measuring laptop screen angles or remotely indicating exactly how open or closed a door is.

For our evalution kits we recommend using our Bend Labs Connect web app to connect to our evaluation kits. Our web app allows anyone with a chrome browser (desktop or mobile) on any device to experience our sensors. The web app allows you to connect to up to 5 evaluation kits and visualize and save data for each sensor.

For our non-evaluation kits we currently have a standard I2C interface with an easy to use API for reading angular data and configuring the sensor. The portable C99/C++ driver can be found on our GitHub repository.

Yes!

Most groups start out by purchasing our evaluation kits and attaching them to early prototypes. Then once they’ve determined a good technological fit, we get involved in custom integrations.

We designed our evaluation kits to make it easy and painless to start prototyping straight out of the box. We ship our evaluation kits with the ability to connect via BLE or I2C. Our companion Android app can connect to the evaluation kit’s electronics over BLE for a quick look at sensor performance.

Other flex sensors on the market, such as piezoresistive flex sensors, are made from a plastic substrate and are not durable and suffer from drift. Other elastomer based flexible sensors, such as stretch sensors, only measure the amount the sensor has been stretched which is an indirect way of measuring angular motion. Our sensors, however, directly measure angular displacement, reject common mode signals such as stretching and are extremely durable and drift free. They also produce bidirectional output that is linearly proportional to the angular displacement of the sensor. Additionally, they are path independent, so extraneous bending and the radius of curvature have minimal impact on the output of the sensor (see our theory manual)

No. Our sensors store the factory calibrations in non-volatile memory so anytime they’re powered on they will always read the indicated angle.

Purchase our evaluation kits. We always recommend this as the first step to better understanding if this technology will be an appropriate solution. If more information is needed, contact us to setup a consultation with our solutions team.