Low-Cost Pliable Materials Transform Glove Into Sign-to-Text Machine

Posted by jesuslewis on August 15th, 2017

Researchers have made a low-cost smart glove that can translate the American Sign Language alphabet into text and send the messages via Bluetooth to a smartphone or computer. The glove can also be used to control a virtual hand.

While it could aid the deaf community, its developers say the smart glove could prove really valuable for virtual and augmented reality, remote surgery, and defense uses like controlling bomb-diffusing robots.

This isn’t the first gesture-tracking glove. There are companies pursuing similar devices that recognize gestures for computer control, à la the 2002 film Minority Report. Some researchers have also specifically developed gloves that convert sign language into text or audible speech.

What’s different about the new glove is its use of extremely low-cost, pliable materials, says developer Darren Lipomi, a nanoengineering professor at the University of California, San Diego. The total cost of the components in the system reported in the journal PLOS ONE cost less than US 0, Lipomi says. And unlike other gesture-recognizing gloves, which use MEMS sensors made of brittle materials, the soft stretchable materials in Lipomi’s glove should make it more robust.

The key components of the new glove are flexible strain sensors made of a rubbery polymer. Lipomi and his team make the sensors by cutting narrow strips from a super-thin film of the polymer and coating them with conductive carbon paint.

Then they use a stretchy glue to attach nine sensors on the knuckles of an athletic leather glove, two on each finger and one on the thumb. Thin, stainless steel threads connect each sensor to a circuit board attached at the wrist. The board also has an accelerometer and a Bluetooth transmitter.

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