Hand injuries from repetitive high-strain and physical overload can hamper or even end a musician's career. To help musicians develop safer playing habits, we developed a multiplecontact force-sensing array that can substitute as a guitar fretboard. The system consists of 72 individual force sensing modules, each containing a flexure and a photointerrupter that measures the corresponding deflection when forces are applied. The system is capable of measuring forces between 0-25 N applied anywhere within the first 12 frets at a rate of 20 Hz with an average accuracy of 0.4 N and a resolution of 0.1 N. Accompanied with a GUI, the resulting prototype was received positively as a useful tool for learning and injury prevention by novice and expert musicians.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2304.06521,
title = {Multi-Contact Force-Sensing Guitar for Training and Therapy},
author = {Zhiyi Ren and Chun-Cheng Hsu and Can Kocabalkanli and Khanh Nguyen and Iulian I. Iordachita and Serap Bastepe-Gray and Nathan Scott},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2304.06521},
year = {2023}
}