UMass Boston

At the Cyber-Physical Systems Lab at University of Massachusetts, Boston, I designed and built a sensor glove that can track the motion of all 4 fingers of a hand. 

The glove was designed to track the motion and output it wirelessly to an exoskeleton robotic glove in order to help patients with weakened or paralyzed hands regain control of their hand through therapy. By putting the sensor glove on their opposite, working hand and putting the exoskeleton glove on the paralyzed hand and moving both hands together, the paralyzed hand can mirror the motion of the hand with the sensor glove on it. In this way, the paralyzed hand, through practice, can slowly regain its muscular strength and control.

I designed the sensor glove by first creating a circuit for incorporating the sensors, LEDs, and an ATMega328P microcontroller. After designing the schematic on EAGLE, we printed the PCB on a milling machine and soldered all of the components. Then, 3D printed rings were designed and glued onto the glove to house the flex sensors for each glove and allow them to easily slide back and forth along the upper part of the finger while they bend. All of the sensors are connected into the analog ports of the microcontroller and the entire PCB is fit onto the top of the glove neatly. A bluetooth transmission device can be plugged directly onto the PCB, or TX and RX wires can be connected to the headers to communicate with the exoskeleton glove.