3D Printed Data Glove Design for VR Based Hand Gesture Recognition

This paper presents a 3D printed exoskeleton data glove that was designed as a low cost input device for Virtual Reality (VR) environment. The glove captures up to ten degrees of freedom of the human hand and integrates with a virtual model designed on Unity software to simulate the movement of the user’s hand. The orientation and position of the user’s hand in space was tracked by an Inertial Measurment Unit (EMU) sensor in a Myo armband. The data glove applies rotary potentiometer as its finger flexion sensors and was controlled by an Arduino Uno R3 microcontroller. The glove communicates with the virtual model on the computer serially via Bluetooth. A prototype was 3D printed and uses acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) plastic as its predominant material. The prototype is calibrated using a system where the user’s hand is opened and then closed to capture accurately the minimum and maximum value of the glove wearer’s finger flexion. The prototype was tested with the Unity virtual model and was fully functional.