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Inside the OpenTouch Glove (right) is a grid of wires (left) that allows the glove to sense the location and degree of any pressure applied to it. Photo: University of Washington<\/p>\n\t\tInside the OpenTouch Glove (right) is a grid of wires (left) that allows the glove to sense the location and degree of any pressure applied to it. Photo: University of Washington<\/p>\n
Yiyue Luo\u2019s Wearable Intelligence Lab<\/a> at the University of Washington is full of machinery that\u2019s oddly cozy. Here, soft and pliable sensors are sewn, knit and glued directly into clothing to give everyday garments new capabilities.\u00a0<\/p>\n One of the lab\u2019s newest curiosities is a nondescript gray work glove embedded with sensors that enable it to \u201cfeel\u201d on its own. An array of small wires hidden inside the glove report the location and degree of pressure anywhere along its surface. When in use, the signals from the glove inform a realtime \u201cheat map\u201d of pressure that could one day help physical therapy patients track their progress, teach robots to grasp objects, and more.<\/p>\n The OpenTouch Glove<\/a> project, as it\u2019s officially known, is led by UW electrical and computer engineering doctoral student Devin Murphy<\/a> as part of a collaboration with the Computational Design and Fabrication Group<\/a> and Multisensory Intelligence Lab<\/a> at MIT. UW News caught up with Murphy to learn more about the glove and its potential uses.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n What inspired you to create this glove?<\/p>\n Devin Murphy: Our hands are arguably our greatest tools as humans. We interact with the world through our hands in so many different ways. But the nature of how we grasp and manipulate things in our environment is super nuanced and complex, and it\u2019s hard to capture. We have very mature electronics that record sight and sound \u2014 think of the cameras and microphones in your smartphone. But there aren\u2019t many electronic devices that record our other senses \u2014 like touch. That\u2019s what I\u2019ve been working to remedy with the OpenTouch Glove.<\/p>\n How does the glove work? What are its capabilities?<\/p>\n DM: There are two flexible circuit boards inside each glove that form a grid of wires across the gripping surface of the glove. We can measure pressure at any point in that mesh where two wires meet. The circuit boards connect to a little box of electronics at the user\u2019s wrist, which processes the signals and sends them wirelessly to a laptop.<\/p>\n We can then generate a \u201cheat map\u201d image showing where force is being applied on the hand, where the hand is applying force to different objects and how much force the hand is applying.\u00a0<\/p>\n This kind of data gives us extra nuance that a camera can\u2019t capture. For example, if your hand is in a bag or behind an object while it\u2019s grasping things, a camera wouldn\u2019t be able to tell what your hand is doing, whereas this glove can follow along.<\/p>\n What are some potential applications for the glove?<\/p>\n DM: I\u2019m particularly excited about how this technology might help patients recovering from an injury. Physical therapists have patients perform a variety of tasks to regain mobility in their hands \u2014 if we can measure how much force people apply during this process, we can provide them with concrete feedback. The patient and therapist can both track progress by monitoring grip strength of the patient over time.\u00a0<\/p>\n We\u2019re also seeing lots of new companies invest in physical intelligence for robotics \u2014 basically recording how robots interact with the physical world. If we can record human hand grip signals, we might be able to teach robotic hands how to mimic human behavior.\u00a0<\/p>\n One other interesting application is in augmented reality or virtual reality. If we replaced traditional controllers with these gloves, it could give users a more natural way to interact with virtual objects and scenery \u2014 though we\u2019d need some additional technology for users to feel pressure when gripping virtual things.<\/p>\n How can other researchers access this technology?<\/p>\n DM: It\u2019s really important to us that the glove is accessible to other researchers and anyone else who might want to use it for their own applications. You can order all of the components of the glove directly from commercial manufacturers, and we have released all of the manufacturing files and instructions for putting the glove together yourself.\u00a0<\/p>\n We\u2019ve also shown some demos of the glove \u201cin the wild\u201d to showcase the different kinds of data it can collect, and we\u2019re planning to release an open source data set collected with the glove in partnership with researchers at MIT.\u00a0<\/p>\n I\u2019m really excited about developing new wearable technologies that allow people to record less popular sensing modalities like touch. I want to figure out how we can capture the nuances of touch-based interactions, so that ultimately we can get better insights into our daily lives.<\/p>\n