Design of Digital Gloves with Feedback for VR

© 2018 IEEE. This article describes the first steps in the development of a low-cost digital sensory glove that designed for use in virtual reality systems especially. Existing concepts of gloves differ in features and design, they have various functions, including feedback, tactile feedback to the electric discharge, a feeling of finger bending, finger grip strength and prediction of action and three-dimensional spatial positioning - to improve sensation and practical experience in virtual reality. Manual dynamic perception and freedom of action, common in the real world, provide instant information about objects in the virtual world. Digital gloves act not only as a remote control in VR, but also provide physical feedback for the user when they come in contact with virtual objects. This article presented an own design for inexpensive gloves that allow for proximal and distal finger joint movements, as well as position/orientation determination with an inertial measuring unit. These sensors and tactile feedback caused by the vibration patterns of the coins at the fingertips are integrated into a wireless, easy-to-use and open-source system. The design of hardware, as well as experiment plans for proof of concept, is presented

Smart Glove for Augmented and Virtual Reality

This research work is carried out on designing and prototyping a smart glove, which can conduct 3D interaction with computer MATLAB model in real time. The smart glove is constructed with only inertial measurement units for gathering and achieving human hand movement position data. This application will support the accuracy of the device and provide additional flexibilities for human interaction with other objects. The purpose of our design is to provide a smart glove with low price (less than 100€) for researchers in different institutions to develop their research projects with virtual and augmented reality. The design of hardware and software, as well as prototyping experiments is also presented

An Instrumented Glove for Restoring Sensorimotor Function of the Hand through Augmented Sensory Feedback

The loss of sensitivity of the upper limb due to neurological injuries severely limits the ability to manipulate objects, hindering personal independence. Non-invasive augmented sensory feedback techniques are used to promote neural plasticity hence to restore the grasping function. This work presents a wearable device for restoring sensorimotor hand functions based on Discrete Event-driven Sensory Control policy. It consists of an instrumented glove that, relying on piezoelectric sensors, delivers short-lasting vibrotactile stimuli synchronously with the relevant mechanical events (i.e., contact and release) of the manipulation. We first performed a feasibility study on healthy participants (20) that showed overall good performances of the device, with touch-event detection accuracy of 96.2% and a response delay of 22 ms. Later, we pilot tested it on two participants with limited sensorimotor functions. When using the device, they improved their hand motor coordination while performing tests for hand motor coordination assessment (i.e., pick and place test, pick and lift test). In particular, they exhibited more coordinated temporal correlations between grip force and load force profiles and enhanced performances when transferring objects, quantitatively proving the effectiveness of the device

Reconfigurable Computing Applied to Latency Reduction for the Tactile Internet

Tactile internet applications allow robotic devices to be remotely controlled over a communication medium with an unnoticeable time delay. In a bilateral communication, the acceptable round trip latency is usually in the order of 1ms up to 10ms depending on the application requirements. It is estimated that 70% of the total latency is generated by the communication network, and the remaining 30% is produced by master and slave devices. Thus, this paper aims to propose a strategy to reduce 30% of the total latency that is produced by such devices. The strategy is to apply reconfigurable computation using FPGAs to minimize the execution time of device-associated algorithms. With this in mind, this work presents a hardware reference model for modules that implement nonlinear positioning and force calculations as well as a tactile system formed by two robotic manipulators. In addition to presenting the implementation details, simulations and experimental tests are performed in order to validate the proposed model. Results associated with the FPGA sampling rate, throughput, latency, and post-synthesis occupancy area are analyzed.Comment: 20 pages, 32 Figure

A system for controlling a computer presentation using gestures

Tato práce se zabývá návrhem zařízení pro bezkontaktní ovládání počítačové prezentace. V první části jsou teoreticky popsány způsoby bezkontaktního ovládání počítače. Druhá část je soustředěna na rozdělení senzoriky a teoretický popis stěžejních prvků pro práci – vývojové desky TinyPICO ESP32 a senzoru BNO055. Ve třetí části je popsán návrh zařízení a jednotlivých gest.This thesis attempts with the design of a device for contactless control of the computer presentation. In the first part there are theoretically described the methods of contactless computer control. The second part is focused on the description of different types of sensors and also the key elements for this thesis – the development board TinyPICO ESP32 and sensor BNO055. Finally, in the third part there is described the design of the device and gestures.