The Glove Project - Student project @ Ideas Unlimited

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The Glove Project!

When three students from Instrumentation Technology Department, SJCE Mysore, approached us for assistance with their idea of a 'Glove project' we were both intrigued and interested. It had shades of some of the work we were doing in terms of wearable electronics and biomedical devices. We thought of it as a good learning opportunity for the students as well as us. We agreed to provide the team with the privilege to use our lab as well as provide them with any kind of technical help required to realize their idea. The students had put this as their entry into an inter-college tech-comeptition,

  Video demonstration of the Glove Project on YouTube

The Glove Project Team: From Left, Swaroop, Ajay and Nikhil

The Glove Project' is a concept/idea to use a glove with sensors to detect Sign Language used by the Deaf and the Dumb. However, if perfected and engineered it has potential applications for:

1. Sign Language interpretation device for deaf and dumb.
2. Gesture sensing device?
3. Useful Input device for computing applications (PC/Mobile)?
4. Diagnostic device in medical applications?

Nearly a month and a half ago, the Glove project started. A week of debate and concept trials, the shape for the glove began to emerge. Nearly a month and a half worth effort, the Proof of Concept emerged. After days of painstaking soldering, re-soldering, testing and perfecting the concept they finally made a working proof of concept ready for demo. The work done as part of this project, the students were exposed to our apprenticeship process and had their hands on skills improved in many aspects.

The Proof of Concept setup consists of :

1. A glove with lots of sensors
2. A wearable watch like interface board
3. A hand shaped display board (evaluation jig) for testing/debugging of the glove.
4. A Microprocessor interface for grabbing data from glove for processing for respective application.

The Proof of Concept (POC) consisting of the Glove with sensors, Wearable Wrist board and an evaluation jig (click to enlarge photo)

This POC proved that using low-cost sensors it is possible to pick up binary signals from finger joints - whether the joint is open or folded - which can be interpreted for decoding sign language from a person wearing the glove in real time.

The Glove @ work: All joints open - Lights off.... (click to enlarge photo)

The Glove @ Work: All fingers closed, lights on! (click to enlarge photo)

The students have now embarked on a venture to interface this glove with a micro-controller to interpret the data in real time and translate it to sign language. (The students successfully completed testing of the POC today. 04-Oct-2012)

We wish them all the best in their endeavor.

The students who built this are from the Dept. of InstrumentationTechnology, SJCE, Mysore.

Nikhil R - 97381-31081

Ajay Rao - 94835-03680

Swaroop G S - 87222-90002