Development of exoskeleton-type data glove for position/force feedback

In this paper, we present a new exoskeleton-type data glove that can sense the movement of the human finger and reflect the force to the finger The data glove is designed on the basis of the skeletal structure of the human hand, and the finger module has 1 degree-of-freedom because it includes three four-bar mechanism joints in series and a wire-coupling mechanism. In addition, the transmission ratio of the finger module is maintained at 1:1.4:1 over the entire movement range, and hence, the module can perform both extension and flexion. In addition, to enable adduction/abduction motion of the human hand, a unique MCP joint is designed by using two universal joints. To validate the feasibility of the data glove, master-slave control experiments based on force-position control between the data glove and the robot hand are conducted.