The Non-Glove Haptic Glove

As much as the computers, smartphones and other consumer electronics shaped our lifestyle in the last few decades, interactive and assistive consumer robots are to enter our daily activities and redefine our future. The main motivation is to implement a wearable device that can be used as a rehabilitation device combined with interactive video games and as a haptic glove to allow us to enter into an unknown virtual environment and have an immersive interaction with virtual objects. Designing such wearable devices is a big challenge as we need to have a compact yet ubiquitous, multimodal, and safe wearable robotic haptic interface that can provide the users with realistic haptic feedback.

We present a soft robotic haptic interface that not only implements a graspable and tangible robotic interface that provides users with haptic feedback in a VR environment and it can help and motivate people recover mobility of upper extremities by making hand and neuro rehabilitation interactive, immersive, effective, and therefore, progressive, particularly when coupled with the VR games.

This device uses pneumatic actuation which provides controlled stiffness gradient and vibration frequencies to recreate kinesthetic and haptic feedback on all five fingers upon contact with virtual objects. Constructed based on soft and origami robotics design paradigms making it flexible, it conforms to your hand biomechanics and enables intuitive and safe haptic interactivity.