Development of a Tilt Sensor Data Glove to Wirelessly Control a Multi-Fingered Robotic Hand Available to Purchase

Electronic gloves are one of the most common methods used as human hand input devices. They proved to be useful in various applications such virtual reality, sign language interpretation and robotic systems. However, many of these electronic gloves tend to be either economically or computationally expensive. In contrast, this article discusses the development of a data glove that is practical and cost efficient with wireless control capabilities. It is based on placing tri-axial tilt accelerometers on the glove to map the movement of human fingers. All data acquired from the glove is transmitted wirelessly via Bluetooth connection to a computer where it can be used for various applications. The glove was used to control a five-motor tendon driven robotic hand. Tests were carried out to correlate tilt angles acquired from the glove with the appropriate motor values that will move the robotic fingers to the same position as that of the glove fingers. As a result, the robotic hand was able to mimic each human hand finger and thereby perform sign and grasp movements.