Development of a Haptic Glove for the Index and Middle Fingers of the Right Hand With Force Feedback

Abstract

Abstract Due to the growth in the amount and types of information that surrounds us, it is important to explore other areas and ideas and ways to interact with information. Haptic systems with their tactile, kinesthetic and motor capabilities, together with the associated cognitive processes, present a bidirectional channel of information to our brain. This channel provides a way to interact with the information with which a large number of applications can be generated. Haptics covers many disciplines; Therefore, a wide variety of applications is generated that includes those areas of human needs such as products, manufacturing, education, health, among others. For teleoperation and virtual reality applications, force feedback is important for the user, since due to this it can improve the interaction between the user’s real environment and the virtual environment. For this reason, the human hand is capable of obtaining information while executing complex tasks. This has a variety of functions among the most important are the sensory and motor functions. That is why there is an interest in creating a haptic device for the hand. Haptic research and technology have created and evaluated different prototypes with their characteristics and capabilities for the use of virtual environments, some of which are currently marketed. In this way, different applications of this technology have been made in areas such as: graphical interface, medicine, games, engineering, telerobotics, simulators and medical rehabilitators. Focusing on the haptic interface for the upper limbs with force feedback, the process of integrating exoskeletons and haptic interface is a great advance to be able to transmit force to the joints of the hand. Traditional methods for the rehabilitation of patients with motor disabilities in the upper limbs are slow, costly and in many cases ineffective, considerably reducing their quality of life. Therefore, it seeks to develop a low-cost haptic force feedback technology with its three main elements: a haptic device, a computer where a virtual environment (interface) is generated, and a human operator that closes the loop, which complements the recovery of these patients and thus achieve better results. Previous studies that integrate 3D printing technologies, virtual reality (VR), microcontrollers and actuation through tensors demonstrate the successful development of different prototypes with similar characteristics, although most of them are expensive. For the development of the prototype, the V methodology was used, performing instrumentation, interface-prototype connection and force feedback tests. The integration of these subsystems after the tests, result in a final prototype of the haptic glove for two fingers (index and middle) of the right hand, managing to generate feedback forces on the user based on the information provided by the interface, complying with the characteristics of being a functional and low-cost glove.