Design & Fabrication of Piezoresistive Six Degree of Freedom Accelerometer for Biomechanical Applications

A miniaturized piezoresistive six-degree of freedom (6DOF) accelerometer has been developed and fabricated using bulk micromachining technology. Most accelerometers developed so far, sense accelerations in only three axial directions. This accelerometer measures three components of linear acceleration and three components of angular acceleration on three orthogonal axes in the frequency bandwidth of 300Hz. The average measured sensitivities of the fabricated sensor for linear accelerations and angular accelerations show a cross-axis sensitivity of <2%. Comparison of the obtained experimental results and finite element simulation shows good agreement. The sensor is ideal for use in biomechanical research applications such as the study of human gesture recognition systems.