2025 · Harvard · Advised by Prof. Yoel Fink

Tactiq

E-Textile · Edge AI · Physical Computing
Sensing Technology

Role: System Design, Textile Fabrication, Circuit Design, Neural Network Training, System Integration

A woven pressure-sensing textile with 85.7% real-time posture classification at ~1 ms on-device inference.

Tactiq is a high-resolution pressure-sensing textile platform developed for multiple applications, including healthcare, interactive technologies, robotics and wearables. The project was advised by Prof. Yoel Fink at MIT Material Science and Engineering Department. The system integrates conductive yarn, velostat sensing geometries, and silicone formulations into a woven textile that captures distributed pressure data across a surface.

An ESP32 microcontroller handles data acquisition and runs a 4-class posture classification neural network trained in-house, achieving 85.7% real-time accuracy, a 0.85 weighted F1 score, and approximately 1 ms on-device inference latency, making true edge deployment viable in clinical settings without cloud dependency.

85.7%

Real-time Accuracy

0.85

Weighted F1 Score

~1ms

On-device Inference

Sensing Materials

Conductive ThreadsVelostatYarn

Hardware

ESP32Custom PCB

Software

4-class Neural NetworkEdge InferenceEasyEDA Circuit SchematicsAI Engineering

Fabrication

Machine Weaving KnittingBraidingSewing Digital Embroidery

Context

Posture MonitoringPressure MappingHealthcare and WellnessRobotics Sensing

Application - The Problem

Pressure Injuries are Preventable.
Yet Cost Healthcare Billions Every Year.

2.5M

annual cases in the U.S. alone

$70k–$150k

per severe case — among the most costly hospital-acquired conditions

continuous monitoring once a patient leaves the clinic

$26.8B

annual U.S. healthcare burden from pressure injuries — a largely preventable cost

The existing systems are

Expensive: out of reach for home or long-term care settings
Clinic-bound: no continuous coverage in daily life
Reactive: injuries are detected after damage has already occurred

Application - The Phygital Solutions

A continuous pressure-sensing textile system paired with a Pressure Intelligence™ engine for proactive injury prevention.

Tactiq brings pressure monitoring into everyday life, woven into the surface, invisible to the patient, always on.

Continuous Monitoring

Visibility beyond the clinic: pressure data captured throughout the day, not just during check-ups.

Real-Time Intelligence

Posture and pressure exposure analysis processed on-device at ~1 ms latency, and no cloud required.

Proactive Intervention

Risk alerts and reposition guidance delivered before injury develops, shifting care from reactive to preventive.

System Design

Smart Textiles Design

Flexible woven sensing architecture enabling real-time distributed pressure intelligence.

Sensing Layer

Woven matrix with conductive thread electrodes provides high-resolution orthogonal pressure matrix
A piezoresistive film (velostat) is sandwiched between 2 fabric layers and the laminate is encapsulated through sewing

Data Acquisition

ESP32 scans the full sensing matrix at sampling rates sufficient for real-time classification
16-channel multiplexer architectures with voltage-divider readout for pin-efficient scanning of 64–70 sensing nodes

Edge AI Classification

4-class posture classifier trained on collected pressure maps using Python
TinyML deployment achieves ~1 ms inference — suitable for real-time clinical monitoring without cloud dependency