Soft-packaged sensory glove system for human-like natural interaction and control of prosthetic hands

Abstract

People with hand amputations experience strenuous daily life challenges, often leading to lifelong use of a prosthetic hand(s) and services. Modern advanced prosthetic hands must be able to provide human hand-like sensory perceptions to receive external stimuli during daily activities while simultaneously replicating a realistic appearance and physical properties to naturally integrate in social contexts; however, the practical realization of these issues are impeded by a lack of effective methodologies. Herein, we present an optimal set of materials, design layouts, and fabrication schemes to construct an easy-to-wear seamless electronic glove (e-glove) suitable for arbitrary hand shapes that provides all of the desired human hand-like features. The system configuration involves a connection to a control wristwatch unit for real-time display of sensory data measured and remote transmission to the user. The experimental and computational studies provide details regarding the underlying principles of the materials selection, mechanics design, and operational management of the entire system. The demonstration of the e-glove system in interactions with human subjects illustrates the utility, comfort, and convenience of this device.

Low‐Resistant Electrical and Robust Mechanical Contacts of Self‐Attachable Flexible Transparent Electrodes with Patternable Circuits

“…[ 2 ] This is owing to the superior mechanical and electrical properties of the nanomaterials. Based on the high mechanical flexibility, optical transparency, and electrical conductivity, FTCEs are key elements of the emerging flexible optoelectronic devices, including flexible displays, [ 3 ] touch panels, [ 4 ] heaters, [ 5 ] solar cells, [ 6 ] electronic skins, [ 7 ] and smart windows. [ 8 ]…”

An artificial sensory neuron with visual-haptic fusion

“…In contrast, the neuronal-level implementation, incorporating sensing, refining, and processing would eventually achieve the biological advantages of fault tolerance and power efficiency. Although multi-sensory capabilities have been realized in some e-skin systems 41 – 43 , their sensory processing has always been completed using conventional digital units. As such, mimicking sensory fusion from the neuronal-level could help to build a highly integrated perceptual system to access massive sensory data for improving current cyborg technologies 44 , 45 and artificial intelligence 46 – 48 .…”

Bioinspired Prosthetic Interfaces

“…d) A sensory network on a prosthetic glove and its stimuli responses, and e) artificial prosthetic hand fabricated on the gloves to better mimic the human‐like features. Reproduced with permission . Copyright 2019, Springer Nature.…”