A Fabricated Force Glove That Measures Hand Forces during Activities of Daily Living

Abstract

Understanding hand and wrist forces during activities of daily living (ADLs) are pertinent when modeling prosthetics/orthotics, preventing workplace-related injuries, and understanding movement patterns that make athletes, dancers, and musicians elite. The small size of the wrist, fingers, and numerous joints creates obstacles in accurately measuring these forces. In this study, 14 FlexiForce sensors were sewn into a glove in an attempt to capture forces applied by the fingers. Participants in this study wore the glove and performed grasp and key turn activities. The maximal forces produced in the study were 9 N at the distal middle finger phalanx and 24 N at the distal thumb phalanx, respectively, for the grasp and key turn activities. Results from this study will help in determining the minimal forces of the hand during ADLs so that appropriate actuators may be placed at the appropriate joints in exoskeletons, orthotics, and prosthetics.

Development and Operation of an Experimental System to Measure the Moments Generated in the Finger Joints

“…The flexible hand glove, for example, is considered a good model for the kinematic analysis of finger joints [7], allowing for the determination of the position as well as the bending angle of each finger joint by means of (flexible) bending sensors located at the joints. Recently, gloves have been instrumented to measure the force in hands in daily activities [8]. There are various systems for measuring finger forces, but the majority of devices are designed to measure grip force [9,10] or pinch force [11] in a single joint position.…”