Electronic Glove Helps Improve Sense of Touch

Touch enhancement glove (Garry Meek/Georgia Tech)

Researchers at Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta have developed a glove that adds a small vibration to one of the fingertips to improve tactile sensitivity and motor performance. Details of the device and preliminary test results were presented in May at the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation in Shanghai.

Georgia Tech engineering professor Jun Ueda worked with physiology faculty Minoru Shinohara and Yuichi Kurita to design and test the electronic glove. The team based their work on the concept of stochastic resonance, where adding appropriate levels of white noise can improve sensory performance, the white noise in this case being a weak vibration in the fingertip.

The device is made of an actuator for a stack of lead zirconate titanate (PZT) layers, a ceramic material that generates high-frequency vibration. The PZT layers are piezoelectric, which means they generate an electrical charge when a mechanical force is applied to them. The actuator is attached to one side of the fingertip so that the palm-side of the finger remains free and the individual wearing the glove can continue to manipulate objects.

The researchers tested the glove on live human subjects. In the study, the researchers attached the device to 10 healthy adult volunteers who performed common sensory and motor skill tasks, including texture discrimination, two-point discrimination, single-point touch, and grasp tests.

For each test, researchers attached the device to a volunteer’s non-dominant index finger and subjected the finger to six randomized vibrations that ranged from 0-150 percent of that person’s vibration amplitude threshold, a value determined in earlier testing. The threshold value was the magnitude of vibration required for a subject to feel that the device was vibrating.

The results show that the volunteers performed statistically better on all of the tasks when mechanical vibration was applied, confirming that the application of certain levels of mechanical vibration enhanced the tactile sensitivity of the fingertip. The levels of vibration that created statistically significant results varied, however. As a result, the researchers are now conducting experiments to determine the optimal amplitude and frequency characteristics of vibration and the influence of long-term exposure to vibrations.

Read more: Hershey Grant Funds University Sensory Science Lab

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