For technical or medical applications, the knowledge of the exact kinematics of the human hand is key to utilize its capability to handle and manipulate objects as well as to communicate with other humans or machines. The optimum between the number of measurement parameters, measuring accuracy as well as complexity, usability and cost of the measuring systems is hard to find. Biomechanic assumptions, the concepts of a biomechatronic system and the mechatronic design process as well as the use of commercial available components are used to develop a sensorized glove. The proposed wearable here can measure 14 of 15 angular values of a simplified hand model introduced in this paper and five contact pressures as well as inertial data of the whole hand with a degree of freedom of six. Due to the modular design and a hand size examination based on anthropological parameters, the concept of the wearable is applicable for a large variety of hand sizes and adaptable to different use cases. Validations show an RMSE for the measurement of the joint angles of 0.99 ° to 2.38° surpassing the human perception threshold and the current state of the art in science and technology for comparable systems.

For technical or medical applications, the knowledge of the exact kinematics of the human hand is key to utilizing its capability to handle and manipulate objects and to communicate with other humans or machines. The optimal relationship between the number of measurement parameters, measurement accuracy as well as complexity, usability and cost of the measuring systems is hard to find. Biomechanic assumptions, the concepts of a biomechatronic system and the mechatronic design process as well as commercially available components are used to develop a sensorized glove. The proposed wearable can measure 14 of 15 angular values of a simplified hand model introduced in this paper. Additionally, five contact pressure values at the fingertips and inertial data of the whole hand with a degree of freedom of six are gathered. Due to the modular design and a hand size examination based on anthropometric parameters, the concept of the wearable is applicable for a large variety of hand sizes and adaptable to different use cases. Validations show a combined root-mean-square error of 0.99° to 2.38° for the measurement of all joint angles at one finger, surpassing the human perception threshold and the current state of the art in science and technology for comparable systems.