Vibrating glove prototype enables you to hold directly to that feeling

The key to increasing tactile sensations? Good vibes, man. Georgia Tech scientists have unveiled a prototype glove that helps improve the sensation of its wearer by adding vibration. The gloves add physical “white noise,” improving the sense of touch within the fingertips of the user. The whole lot remains to be within the early stages of testing, however the glove’s inventors believe that it could some day find real world applications amongst people in occupations that require a great deal of manual dexterity and people with health conditions that experience dulled the sensation of their hands.

Wearable device that vibrates fingertip could improve one’s sense of touch

a touch vibration is mostly a great point for those who desire a sensitive touch.

Researchers on the Georgia Institute of Technology have developed a glove with a different fingertip designed to enhance the wearer’s sense of touch. Applying a small vibration to the side of the fingertip improves tactile sensitivity and motor performance, in keeping with their research results.

Previous research has shown that adding an acceptable amount of white noise — an idea called stochastic resonance — can improve sight, hearing, balance control and touch, however the white noise had not been incorporated right into a wearable device. The Georgia Tech prototype is assumed to be the 1st wearable stochastic resonance device, attaching to the fingertip to enhance the sense of touch.

“This device may in the future be used to help individuals whose jobs require high-precision manual dexterity or people with health conditions that reduce their sense of touch,” said Jun Ueda, an assistant professor inside the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Tech.

Ueda worked with Minoru Shinohara, an associate professor within the School of Applied Physiology at Georgia Tech, and visiting scholar Yuichi Kurita, to design the device and test its capabilities on a small group of healthy individuals.

Details of the device and preliminary test results were presented in May on the 2011 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation in Shanghai.

The device uses an actuator made up of a stack of lead zirconate titanate layers to generate high-frequency vibration. The ceramic layers are piezoelectric, this means that they generate an electric charge when a mechanical force is applied to them. The actuator is hooked up to the side of the fingertip in order that the palm-side of the finger remains free and the person wearing the glove can continue to control objects.

For this study, the researchers attached the device to ten healthy adult volunteers who performed common sensory and motor skill tasks, including texture discrimination, two-point discrimination, single-point touch and grasp tests. The experimental results showed that the volunteers performed statistically better on all the tasks when mechanical vibration was applied.

“All the experimental results showed that some mechanical vibration was better than none in any respect, however the level of vibration that statistically improved sensorimotor functions varied by test,” noted Ueda.

For every test, researchers attached the device to a volunteer’s non-dominant index finger and subjected the finger to 6 randomized vibrations that ranged from 0-150 percent of that person’s vibration amplitude threshold, a worth that was resolute by earlier testing. The edge value was the magnitude of vibration required for a subject matter to feel that the device was vibrating.

Within the two-point discrimination test, two sharp points were pressed against the fingertip and volunteers reported whether or not they could reliably distinguish two points touching their finger versus only one. The consequences showed that after individuals were subjected to vibrations equal to 75 and 100% in their thresholds, they can sense two points that were closer together.

The only-point touch experiment involved pressing a fiber strand against each individual’s finger. Subjects were asked to report in the event that they could feel filaments of other weights touching their fingers. The volunteers could feel lighter weight filaments when exposed to vibrations as much as their vibration amplitude threshold.

Inside the third experiment, pieces of sandpaper with different grits were glued on one side of a plastic board. Researchers then randomly selected a test piece of sandpaper and attached it to the alternative side of the board — which the topics couldn’t see. Subjects touched the one piece of sandpaper and tried to choose the matching piece from the nine samples at the other side of the board. At vibration levels of fifty and 100 pc in their thresholds, the topics selected the ideal piece of sandpaper 15 percent more often than once they weren’t exposed to any vibration.

For the grasping test, each subject pinched and held an object for 3 seconds with as small a force as possible without letting it slip. Statistically significant improvements in grasping were observed for cases of fifty, 100 and 125 percent of threshold vibration.

All four sensing ability tests confirmed that the appliance of certain levels of mechanical vibration enhanced the tactile sensitivity of the fingertip. However, since the levels of vibration that created statistically significant results varied, the researchers are currently conducting experiments to establish the optimal amplitude and frequency characteristics of vibration and the influence of long-term exposure to vibrations. The researchers also are engaged on optimizing the design of the glove and testing the effect of attaching actuators to either side of the fingertip or the fingernail.

“The way forward for this research could lead on to the improvement of a singular orthopedic device which can help those with peripheral nerve damage resume their daily activities or improve the talents of people with jobs that require skills in manipulation or texture discrimination,” said Ueda.