MODELING HUMAN HAND AND SENSING HAND MOTIONS WITH THE FIVE-FINGERED HAPTIC GLOVE MECHANISM

摘要

This paper presents the design and application of a newly developed five-fingered haptic glove mechanism. This haptic device is a lightweight and portable actuator system that fits on a hand. The new five-fingered glove is adaptable to a wide variety of finger sizes, without constraining the range of motion which makes it possible to accurately and comfortably track the complex motion of the finger joints and add a sense of touch to each finger of the user. Based on this glove, a novel method was developed to build an accurate human hand model which includes finger length and joints location. The parameters of the hand are determined by a circle fitting procedure from a collection of points. The method of least squares fitting of circles is used to analyze the kinematic model. The center and the radius of the fitting circle are the joint location and the finger length respectively. The experimental results demonstrate that the newly developed five-fingered glove is capable of reliably modeling hand kinematics and measuring fingers' motion. These capabilities are often needed for monitoring and assisting rehabilitation activities of the hand as well as applications involving virtual reality and teleoperation.