Development of Exo-Glove for Measuring 3-axis Forces Acting on the Human Finger without Obstructing Natural Human-Object Interaction

Measuring the forces that humans exert with their fingers could have many potential applications, such as skill transfer from human experts to robots or monitoring humans. In this paper we introduce the "Exo-Glove" system, which can measure the joint angles and forces acting on the human finger without covering the skin that is in contact with the manipulated object. In particular, 3-axis sensors measure the deformation of the human skin on the sides of the finger to indirectly measure the 3-axis forces acting on the finger. To provide a frame of reference for the sensors, and to measure the joint angles of the human finger, an exoskeleton with remote center of motion (RCM) joints is used. Experiments showed that with the exoskeleton the quality of the force measurements can be improved.