An Empirical Framework for Controlling Artificial Hand Gripper System Using Smart Glove

Abstract

A human hand is a very complex grasping architecture which can handle objects of different sizes and shapes. When such important feature is lost, the replacement artificial hand should capable to imitate the real hand capability, hence ensuring user comfort. This paper proposes a system to control multi finger grippers with emphasis on the finger tips and finger joints. It consists of two modules namely smart glove in master module and hand gripper in slave module. The former responsible to infer user control command while the latter controlling the robot arm movement according to the user instruction. In master module, the system comprises combination of flex sensors and force sensor mounted under the glove to determine fingers bending angle and the force value. Such information is useful to control the artificial gripper for grasping objects in various shapes with right amount of force. In the slave module, the robot arm consist combination of power window motor and servos to initiate the arm and finger movement. Experimental results have shown the feasibility of the proposed system for controlling the artificial gripper and arm precisely according to the user command.