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Development of Smart Glove system for therapy treatment

Conference Paper · May 2015

DOI: 10.1109/ICBAPS.2015.7292220

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 2015 International Conference on BioSignal Analysis, Processing and Systems (ICBAPS)

Development of Smart Glove System for Therapy Treatment

Abdul Malik. M. Ali1, Zulkhairi MD.Yusof2, Kushairy A.K1, F. Zaharah H1, Azman Ismail.
Universiti Kuala Lumpur British Malaysian Institute,
Electrical Technology1 Section and Electronic Technology2
Batu 8, Jln Sg Pusu, 53100, Gombak Selangor.
amalik@unikl.edu.my

Abstract
Arm rehabilitation activities require continuous monitoring process in care. This later concept will be followed as in this study for
order to provide information on rehabilitation results to be analyzed by the development of an artificial hand gripper [8-10].
therapist. The purpose of monitoring is to help them to improve and Teleoperation is the controlling of a robot or system over a
customize the rehabilitation process. Moreover, a portable and simple home- distance where a human and a robot collaborate to perform
based rehabilitation device can help patients to improve daily rehabilitation
activity. Some previous studies regarding home-based rehabilitation process tasks and to achieve common goal. The operator is the human
have shown improvement promoting human movement recovery. But controlling entity, whereas the teleoperator refers to the
existing rehabilitation devices are expensive and need to be supervised by a system or robot being controlled. Traditional literature divides
physical therapist, which are complicated to be used at home. Some devices tele-operation into two fields: direct teleoperation, with the
are not so efficient to be used at home due to the large size and complex
system. In this current work, flex sensor, force sensitive resistors and operator closing all control loops and supervisory control, if
accelerometer were assessed in order to be implemented as a sensory unit the teleoperator (a robot) exhibits some degree of control itself
for a portable arm rehabilitation device. The analog signal from the sensors [1]. Tele-presence means that the operator receives sufficient
will be conveyed to an Arduino microcontroller for data processing and information about the tele-operator and the task environment,
logging. The device is equipped with online or portable data logging
capabilities which can store daily activity results. The results of displayed in a sufficiently natural way, that the operator feels
rehabilitation activity can be used for further monitoring and analysis. physically present at a remote site [1]. The feeling of presence
Experiments were carried out to determine the feasibility of each sensor plays a crucial role in teleoperation, the better he can
towards the design of the new device (Figure 1). The experiments
accomplish a task. One method type of communication system
demonstrate the capabilities of the sensors to produce extended information
regarding arm movement activities which can be implemented in the design. that can embed into the robots peripheral is via using
Bluetooth technology. The aim of this research is to assist
Keyword: Microcontroller, master system and therapy handicapped individual in providing them with an enhanced
version prosthetics that is economical and affordable.
I. INTRODUCTION
II. METHOD
In science, the definition of “gripper” is subsystems of
handling mechanisms which provide temporary contact with The development of this project involves the designing of a
the object to be grasped. They ensure the position and Smart Glove and an artificial multi-finger hand gripper (refer
orientation when carrying and joining the object to the figure 1). The concept of this research is to design, develop,
handling equipment. Prehension is achieved by force assists and measure a device which can continuously monitor
producing and form matching elements. The term “gripper” is the upper arms. The device is fully functioning of smart glove
also used in cases where no actual grasping, but rather holding by using microcontroller system. This system can collected the
of the object as in vacuum suction where the retention force data, process and save in the computer monitoring system.
can act on a point, line or surface [1]. In another study, a new
prosthetic hand is being tested at the Orthopedic University
Hospital in Heidelberg Grip which functions almost like a
natural hand. It can hold a credit card, use a keyboard with the
index finger, and lift a bag weighing up to 20 kg. It's the
world's first commercially available prosthetic hand that can
move each finger separately and has an outstanding range of
grip configurations. The “i-LIMB Hand” is controlled by a
unique, highly intuitive control system that uses a traditional
two input “Myoelectric” (muscle signal) to open and close the
hand’s [2]. The construction of the artificial hand gripper
which is each individual powered finger can be quickly
removed by simply removing one screw. Thus, the developed
prosthetics can easily swap out fingers which require servicing
and therefore patients can return to their everyday lives after a
short visit to the clinic [3-4]. A three fingered, multi jointed
robot gripper for experimental use is presented. Fig. 1. Shows the proposed Smart Glove and artificial hand
This artificial limb looks and acts like a real human hand gripper.
and represents a generational advance in bionics and patient

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 2015 International Conference on BioSignal Analysis, Processing and Systems (ICBAPS)

The microcontroller allows the control of the activity of the

smart glove in an easy and effective way. The smart glove is
connected to a computer for controlling and alerting the user
to error condition arising. In order to perform manipulation
task a multi finger system consisting of the five-finger robotic
hand gripper and data glove have been develop.
The usage of a universal gripper allows for operation in highly
variable, unstructured, unknown or dynamic working
environments. As part of telemanipulation (wire or wireless)
system the gripper is controlled by a human operation (smart
glove). On this account human hand and finger motions are
measured using the flex sensor and transfer data to the
microcontroller. Sensed interaction forces are fed back to the
operation and displayed through an LCD monitor. Since
Fig 2. Smart Glove (a) Setup for four set Flex sensor
human hand and gripper have different kinematic structure,
appropriate mapping for forces and motion between the finger
and gripper. Above is a block diagram for all operation in this
project. In simple word, data of each fingers from Master part
should be the same with Slave finger parts. Disturbance error
will be corrected by comparing value between Master and
Slave same finger parts until the both be equilibrium state. If
equilibrium state is achieved, it means that everything operates
at optimum condition.

III. HARDWARE SYSTEM

The Arduino (UNO) microcontroller used in this application

has an Analogue /Digital (A/D) converter built on the chip and
a sampling rate of 20 sec/sample. In Figure 1, the flowcharts
of the programs running on the first (root) microcontroller and
the second (slave) are shown. The root microcontroller is
connected through the Atmega 328 which is the brain of the
Arduino microcontroller. Arduino board is made of an
Atmel328 AVR microprocessor, a crystal or oscillator
(basically a crude clock that sends time pulses to the
microcontroller to enable it to operate at the correct speed) and
a 5-volt linear regulator. Arduino board has a USB connector
to enable it to be connected to a PC or Mac to upload or
retrieve data. The board exposes the microcontrollers I/O
(Input/output) pins to enable it to connect those pins to other
circuits or to sensors, etc. One of the main advantage of this
board is it does not use the USB-to-serial driver chip. Instead,
it features the Atmega8U2 programmed as a USB-to-serial
converter. The microcontrollers share the same transmitting
bus, which is the serial transmit (TX) to the PC. At the end of
the sampling procedure, the root microcontroller opens the
communication channel, sending the data package (8 bytes)
and at the completion issues a command (Port C bit 1) to the
next (slave) microcontroller to take over the transmitting bus
and transmit its own data package. The slave microcontroller’s
flowchart has one more subroutine, sending the end of data
package transmission to the PC. A program running on the PC
decodes the incoming data to finger position. On the PC, there
is also a calibration program, requesting the user to position
the fingers in a fully extended position and in a fully closed
position as a fist.
Fig 3. HyperTerminal Channel Analysis for Master
A Smart Glove system is developed in order to effectively
demonstrate the grasping of objects for a certain tasks. The
process involving transmitting electrical signals from the
smart glove (master) to Artificial Hand Gripper (slave) is the
most challenging task in the circuit design. As shown in figure
2, the Flex sensors is attached on the back of the Smart Glove.
The hand glove incorporates a sensory system which can
detect finger flexion. The sensors are connected to an Arduino
microcontroller for analog signal detection via Ribbon Cable.
The Ribbon cable has 10 interconnected line, each line consist
of 5 core. Each core allows 5 Volt Direct Current. To read the
sensor, its variable resistance is converted to a variable voltage
and amplified with an op-amp. Then, the analog signal is
transmitted to the A/D converter in the microcontroller side
for data processing. Each of the multi-finger gripper’s finger
will move according to the flexion of flex sensor attached on
the Smart Glove. The system designed finger angle, direction
and speed as similar as the master’s motion. Referring
illustration in figure 2, The Arduino (UNO) microcontroller
has been used in this device to process and control signals
generated from sensors. The Arduino microcontroller needs to
be connect USB to a personal computer’s COM port.
Movement from master will provide raw data signals from
each five of flex sensors to be processed in Arduino board.

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 2015 International Conference on BioSignal Analysis, Processing and Systems (ICBAPS)

Arduino will process the raw data collected and transmit the
data to the computer screen as shown in figure 3.
.

(a)

Fig 4. Bluetooth Channel Analysis for master and slave

(b)
V. RESULT & DISCUSSION Fig 5 : Picture a and b, above showing the activity of Artificial
hand Gripper (1) Initial position (2) bend 30° (3) bend
60°(4) bend 90°
The characteristic of flex sensor as shown in figure 5 been
recorded. The flex sensor is a resistance-varying strip that Table 1: Arrow finger activity
increases its total electrical resistance when the strip is flexed Position Arrow finger Angle vs Resistant
in one direction (in the other direction the resistance does not
vary significantly). This angle is measured between the two 0 ° degree 14.0 K Ohm
tangent lines at the ends of the flex sensor’s body. The flex
sensor has a typical electrical resistance variation when flexed 30 ° degree 19.03 K Ohm
or bent. From the experiment, resistance value against the flex 60 ° degree 22.01 K Ohm
sensor bending angle can be plotted as shown on graph 1 and
2. The experiment shows that when flex sensor is bend 90 ° degree 24.891 K Ohm
inward, resistance value increased significantly as the angle of
flex sensor is bend further. However, when it is bent outward,
the resistance value decreased gradually. These preliminary
finding suggest that flex sensor is clearly suitable to detect Graph 1, 2, 3 and 4 shows the results of experiment done on
finger bending angle by utilizing inward bend of the flex the flex sensor. We applied bending on the flexi sensor active
sensor. surface 5 times, and the graph shows 5 peaks which suggest
that the sensor can be used to detect bend when the glove
bending 90°, 60°,45° and 30° . By attaching this sensor to the
gripper fingertips, the flex sensor will act as a detector which
sends data to the microcontroller to inform about the gripper is
grasping an object. We expected to be able to control the
amount of deferent object generated on the grasped object
based on the resistant value generated from the flex sensors.

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 2015 International Conference on BioSignal Analysis, Processing and Systems (ICBAPS)

Graph 1: Flex sensor bending angle during experiment

Degree vs Voltage
Graph 4: Flex sensor bending angle during experiment
Analog Data and Time
30 ° 60 ° 90 °
The result from the Graph 3 shows that, the different
respond signal during standing and sitting, so in next
experiment is to investigate the detail analogue digital
converter raw data for each fingertip when the subject in
sitting position. The Graph 4 show detail experiment of the
each fingertip during gripping the polymer for mapping the
smart glove and artificial hand gripper. Four force tension
sensors which are F2, F3 and F4 with two tactile sensors of the
F1 and F5 index fingers are plotted. The outcome was fully
satisfying and sufficiently fulfils the requirement of smart
glove if compared with the other variety of flexi force sensors
that were experienced. The result shows that the flexi force
sensor can measure the performed of each finger.

Graph 2: Flex sensor bending angle during experiment V. CONCLUSION

Degree vs Resistance
The mechanical were analyzed and finalized for designing a
workable device. A new approach with four fingers and a
Force sensor 1 & Force sensor 2
4.5 thumb gripper had been developed and controlled to ensure
Force sensor 1
Force sensor 2
optimum finger gripping and positioning was applied in the
4
Smart Glove (Master). The variable grip force feature permits
3.5 grasping and lifting of fragile objects without crushing them.
3
The characteristics of several kinematics arrangements,
including level mechanisms, and direct linear drives were
2.5
discussed to choose a satisfactory finger mechanism. The
v o lt

2 direct linear drive was chosen because it poses a linear

relationship between actuator input and finger position and the
1.5
independence of gripping force from gripper opening. A
1 useful objective index, the gripper ratio which is the maximum
0.5
weight of the object lifted divided by highest gripper weight
was applied in the artificial hand gripper design. This ratio
0
1 11 21 31 41 51 61 71 81 91 101 111 121 131 141 151 161 171 ensures the artificial hand gripper was flexible to be operated
time (200ms/unit) with different kinematics structure and source of power
especially on comparing the payload carrying capacity of the
Graph 3: Flexi Force sensor bending angle during experiment gripper. This flexibility offered in flexi-force allows it to be
Volt vs Time retrofitted in the smart glove. The optimum result was
obtained when consuming the responsive flexi-force sensor

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 2015 International Conference on BioSignal Analysis, Processing and Systems (ICBAPS)

into the smart glove. The high sensitivity of the flexi force
sensor was monitored with the great change of its resistances
with small degree of finger kinematics. This enables the
Arduino microprocessor to generate significant analogue
digital converter result for mapping the servo motors
positions. The advantage of the Arduino microprocessor was
used to develop stand-alone interactive object to be interfaced
to a computer. Instead of collecting data from the wearable
sensor, it also fulfils the objective requirement as a hyper
terminal data logging system. Upon a serial data transmission
from the Arduino, the acquired data of five flexi force sensors
for each finger were sent and logged into the computer. The
research work has found that the developed application has a
significant purpose in artificial hand gripper system and
rehabilitation treatment. In addition to that, the smart glove
and the Arduino based data logging system can be utilized in
monitoring and evaluation of patient who suffers from mini
stroke, Parkinson and sport related injuries.
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