Purpose

Although conformable devices are commonly designed to couple with the human body for personalized and localized medicine, their applications are expanding rapidly. This paper aims to delineate this expansion and predict greater implications in diverse fields.

Design/methodology/approach

Today’s device technologies continue to face fundamental obstacles preventing their seamless integration with target objects to effectively access, evaluate and alter self-specific physical patterns, while still providing physical comfort and enabling continuous data collection. Due to their extreme mechanical compliance, conformable devices permit the query of signals occurring at interfaces so as to decode and encode biological, chemical and mechanical patterns with high resolution, precision and accuracy. These unique and versatile capabilities allow for a marked change in the approach to tackling scientific questions, with the ability to address societal challenges at large.

Findings

Here, this study highlights the current state of these devices in a wide range of fields, such as interactive teaching, textiles, robotics, buildings and infrastructure, agriculture, climate and space, and further forecasts essential features of these devices in the near future.

Originality/value

This study justifies conformable devices’ growing utility through a novel quantitative analysis methodology that indexes peer-reviewed journal articles based on specific keywords, whereby this study tracks keyword frequency over time across specific fields in conjunction with conformability-like topics. The resulting trends’ trajectories provide the foundation for this study’s future projections. This study concludes with a perspective on the possible challenges concomitant with a ubiquitous presence of these technologies, including manufacturing, wireless communication, storage, compression, privacy and sharing of data, environmental sustainability, avoidance of inequality and bias and collaboration between stakeholders at all levels of impact.

中文翻译：

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用于无感知计算的无处不在的顺应系统

目的

尽管适形设备通常被设计为与人体结合用于个性化和局部化医疗，但它们的应用正在迅速扩大。本文旨在描述这种扩展并预测在不同领域的更大影响。

设计/方法/方法

当今的设备技术继续面临着阻碍其与目标对象无缝集成以有效访问、评估和改变自身特定物理模式的基本障碍，同时仍提供物理舒适度并实现持续的数据收集。由于其极高的机械顺应性，适形设备允许查询发生在接口处的信号，从而以高分辨率、精确度和准确度对生物、化学和机械模式进行解码和编码。这些独特且多功能的能力使解决科学问题的方法发生了显着变化，并能够应对整个社会挑战。

发现

在这里，本研究重点介绍了这些设备在互动教学、纺织、机器人、建筑和基础设施、农业、气候和空间等广泛领域的现状，并进一步预测了这些设备在不久的将来的基本特征。

原创性/价值

这项研究通过一种新颖的定量分析方法证明了一致性设备不断增长的实用性，该方法根据特定关键字对同行评审的期刊文章进行索引，从而本研究跟踪特定领域的关键字频率随时间的推移以及类似一致性的主题。由此产生的趋势轨迹为本研究的未来预测奠定了基础。本研究最后展望了这些技术无处不在可能带来的挑战，包括制造、无线通信、存储、压缩、隐私和数据共享、环境可持续性、避免不平等和偏见以及各级利益相关者之间的合作的影响。