Textile materials in the Industrial Revolution 4.0 have now begun to be developed in Indonesia, especially by the STTT Bandung Polytechnic, the Ministry of Industry of the Republic of Indonesia. Textile sensors are textile materials that have the ability to sense stimuli from the surrounding environment. The manufacture of touch sensors using the principle of capacitive sensors made of textiles offers better form features and interface flexibility between humans and machines compared to conventional electronic touch sensors in general.

Afriani, a student of the Polytechnic STTT Bandung, has succeeded in making an innovation of touch sensors based on conductive textile fabrics and semiconductor nanofibers with an electrospinning machine in the Physics Laboratory of the STTT Polytechnic Bandung.

He did this because he saw the enormous potential of the textile industry 4.0 in Indonesia that could be applied. However, the interest of many industries in the manufacture of electronic textile materials or smart textiles in Indonesia is still far from its target and potential.

Therefore, Afriani tried to develop an innovation in the design of electronic textile materials by utilizing nanofibers produced using an electrospinning machine designed by the STTT Bandung Polytechnic Physics laboratory to make touch sensors based on nanofibers.

This nanofiber-based touch sensor is designed using the working principle of a resistor-capacitor charge-discharge circuit that has been developed by the Physics Laboratory of the Polytechnic STTT Bandung since 2015.

The conductive cloth and nanofiber touch sensors have also been connected to smart phone devices and connected to an IoT and cloud-based system.

According to Afriani, the application of this touch sensor in clothing can be used to help monitor in real time the number of movements made by a person if the sensor is touched when the person moves, for example when someone does a sport lifting weights, then the number of movements that have been done will be monitored on the smart phone and can be recorded in real time in the cloud.

In the future, the application of this nanofiber-based touch sensor can be developed as a real-time heart rate detector and also for purposes in ergonomics and various other purposes, both in the medical and educational fields.

Afriani explained that the touch sensor designed by him is better than commercial touch sensors in general.

According to him, this touch sensor has advantages such as easy in design, better flexibility compared to commercial touch sensors, and the materials used to make this touch sensor easy to find in Indonesia.

Afriani added, although this is only preliminary research, this touch sensor will continue to be developed. Of course, so that later more features can be added to the nanofiber-based touch sensor and can also be commercialized so that it can benefit the wider community.