I want to blog about Immersion’s CyberGlove for ages (well, just a couple of weeks actually.) It’s Saturday, I’ve got time, so I gathered info to write a glovy post.

Immersion ‘s CyberGlove wireless hand motion-capture glove provides up to 22 joint-angle measurements to transform hand and finger motions into real-time digital joint-angle data.

The 18-sensor model features two bend sensors on each finger, four abduction sensors, plus sensors measuring thumb crossover, palm arch, wrist flexion and wrist abduction.
The 22-sensor model has three flexion sensors per finger, four abduction sensors, a palm-arch sensor, and sensors to measure flexion and abduction. Each sensor is extremely thin and flexible being virtually undetectable in the lightweight elastic glove.

The CyberGlove is used in real-world applications, including digital prototype evaluation, virtual reality biomechanics, and animation.

Digital Producer.

Researcher Jose Hernandez-Rebollar of George Washington University created last year the “AcceleGlove” that can translate the rapid hand movements used to make the alphabet and some of the words and phrases of sign language.

The device uses accelerometers, a microcontroller, and algorithms to translate American Sign Language into the written and spoken word.

Placed on the hand and strapped to the arm, the AcceleGlove allows the accelerometers to act as sensors that generate signals from the movement, of the hand and the fingers in relation to the body. These signals are analyzed by a microcontroller.

To find what the recorded position and trajectory actually mean, the position of the fingers and the trajectory of the hand are run through an algorithms to detect the gesture and classify the gesture in a certain category, to find the correct word associated with the hand movement. This entire process takes milliseconds from the time the sign is made, to recognition of the sign, and the computerized voice saying the corresponding word.

From GWU, via 21f.

Dr. Carsten Merhing from UC Irvine invented in 2002 the Keyboard Independent Touch Typing device (KITTY), a finger-mounted system allowing its wearer to input data in a manner similar to touch-typing on a standard keyboard.

The glove-like KITTY prototype includes single conductive contacts on the tip of each finger and a series of six contacts on each thumb. The thumb contacts correspond to the three rows of letters on a QWERTY keyboard. Users “type” by touching the fingertip contacts to those on the thumb of the same hand. On the left hand, touching the index finger to the center of the thumb makes an “f,” for example. The input signals are sent to a keyboard encoder connected to the main computing device, which can display them on a monitor or a wearable computer’s glasses-mounted display.

Via 21f.

In 2001, Swedish company Senseboard designed the two hand-mounted gadget that can connect to a computing device via Bluetooth technology. The user can type on a hard surface like a desk or table, or into the air. The hand-mounts measure finger movements and tell the handheld what keys the user intends to press.

Via Alpern.

See also: the Digiglove, Future Fuji Digital Camera Glove.