We are pleased to announce the final revision of our glove is completed. This glove will hold all the sensors and actuators along with the perfboard made for the glove.
Glove Perfboard Connection
The glove perfboard had to be secured onto the glove without the solder directly being in contact with the glove. The solder connections are thick and if it is glued directly on the glove, the user's skin will feel them and it can be uncomfortable. Thus, there needed to be some adhesive layer that connects the perfboard to the glove without the user feeling any of the solder connections. Initially, we thought of gluing a piece of foam to the bottom of the perfboard and connecting the foam to the glove. However, this would not allow us to remove the perfboard from the PCB to debug it if necessary.
We ended up finding some velcro with adhesive to experiment with. It was fairly decent and the perfboard held up. The weight of the wires that come as out from the output sockets did pull the perfboard back quite a bit as seen below, but this could easily be fixed with a stronger adhesive between the velcro and the glove
I hot glued some velcro onto the bottom of the perfboard and some velcro onto a small area of a spare glove to fit the perfboard. This area had to be flat enough so that when someone clenches their hand into a fist, most of the velcro will still be in contact with the perfboard. Below is a test on the spare glove and the perfboard is held securely on the back of the glove in the small area with the velcro.
In the current revision, the velcro was extended across the glove to make the design more inclusive for those with bigger hands who might need to relocate where the glove goes.
Flex Sensor Sleeves
In the latest revision, there are long blue sleeves that were embroidered onto the top of each finger in the glove. Embroidering allows the stitch to be simpler and have the sleeves more flexible than before. They were pushed to the edge of each fingertip to accommodate the length of the flex sensors. The heat shrink of the flex sensors was secured onto the glove with hot glue. These kept the flex sensors in place when the hand was clenched into a fist. One flex sensor was also flipped to get proper readings when bending a finger.
Haptic Motor Sleeves
In the final revision, the haptic motor sleeves were shortened to small pockets as this device is for right-handed users. There was no need to accommodate for switching the location of the haptic motors and flex sensors. The haptic motor wires were initially going to have a sleeve along the right side of each finger so the wires could be routed through there, but that proved to be more complicated as it would require more fabric to be precisely cut. Additionally, the heat shrink made it hard to bend the wires, and routing them through side pockets on the fingers would mean bending the wires some more.
Then, we found ring-size adjusters that were flexible and wide enough to fit small bundles of wires. They are clear, small, and flexible and surprisingly they can be used to group small bunches of wires. I tried using the adjusters and they do a good job of keeping the haptic motor wires on the sides of the fingers. I tested the adjusters by adding them to the pinky, ring finger, and middle finger and seeing how it feels to clench a fist or put your fingers beside each other. They were hardly noticeable and it wasn’t restricting my movements nor did they feel stiff. As a result, the adhesive side of the motors was used to stick the motor into the sleeve, and the ring size adjusters were added to the motor wires and flex sensor wires to keep them bound closely to each other.
Recommendations
If we had more time to improve the final revision, the sleeves would have been converted to pockets with the ends stitched so that the flex sensors and haptics could not be pushed out of the glove. The wires could have been shortened as well or there could have been another piece of fabric or elastic to hold the top portion of the wires near the perfboard.
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