Wearable hand module and real-time tracking algorithms for measuring finger joint angles of different hand sizes with high accuracy using FBG strain sensor

Jun Sik Kim, Byung Kook Kim, Minsu Jang, Kyumin Kang, Dae Eun Kim, Byeong Kwon Ju, Jinseok Kim

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    46 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    This paper presents a wearable hand module which was made of five fiber Bragg grating (FBG) strain sensor and algorithms to achieve high accuracy even when worn on different hand sizes of users. For real-time calculation with high accuracy, FBG strain sensors move continuously according to the size of the hand and the bending of the joint. Representatively, four algorithms were proposed; point strain (PTS), area summation (AREA), proportional summation (PS), and PS/interference (PS/I or PS/I_α). For more accurate and efficient assessments, 3D printed hand replica with different finger sizes was adopted and quantitative evaluations were performed for index~little fingers (77 to 117 mm) and thumb (68~78 mm). For index~little fingers, the optimized algorithms were PS and PS/I_α. For thumb, the optimized algorithms were PS/I_α and AREA. The average error angle of the wearable hand module was observed to be 0.47 ± 2.51° and mean absolute error (MAE) was achieved at 1.63 ± 1.97°. These results showed that more accurate hand modules than other glove modules applied to different hand sizes can be manufactured using FBG strain sensors which move continuously and algorithms for tracking this movable FBG sensors.

    Original languageEnglish
    Article number1921
    JournalSensors (Switzerland)
    Volume20
    Issue number7
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 2020 Apr 1

    Bibliographical note

    Funding Information:
    Funding: This work was supported by a KIST intramural grant (2E30090) and the Convergence Technology Development Program for Bionic Arm through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Science & ICT (No. 2017M3C1B2085292). This work was also supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant funded by the Korea government (MSIT) (No. 2020R1A2C2004714).

    Publisher Copyright:
    © 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.

    Keywords

    • Algorithm
    • Fiber Bragg grating strain sensor
    • Hand motion capture
    • Real-time tracking

    ASJC Scopus subject areas

    • Analytical Chemistry
    • Information Systems
    • Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics
    • Biochemistry
    • Instrumentation
    • Electrical and Electronic Engineering

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