The Inteliglove project is real time gesture controller that tracks finger movements and palm orientation in space.

 

The project was initiated during a coding session with Michael Hansmeyer at CAAD ETHz as a tactile interface to control various parameters in real time. The purpose of this interface is to reach a vivid continuum between actual and virtual kinaesthetics.

For this purpose, a lot of experiments were performed, also with commercial devices such as the Myo and Leap Motion. before deciding on developing interactive glove prototypes as the the optimal solution.

The Inteliglove offers wireless tracking of palm orientation in space (yaw, pitch, roll) as well as 6 bend sensor sockets for finger movement detection. The initial version was developed as an Arduino FIO shield, while the latest build is a stable circuit that uses the Arduino Pro Mini 328. Both versions maintain the sensor and networking components modular.

During its development, the Inteliglove project has undergone a series of optimizations of the physical design, to lower as much as possible, the degree of intrusiveness to the users’ hands -the user wearing the gloves can perform a variety of tasks such as typing. The latest prototype was built with 3D printed elastic material (as seen in the projectAnywhere video).

Technical specifications

Features:

  • Hand orientation calculation, outputing an Euler angles vector, based on a 3 sensor 9DOF fusion using the Razor fusion algorithms.
  • Single axis per finger bending sensor, calibrated in real time
  • Calculation frequency of about 50Hz (every 20 milliseconds)
  • Wireless range of up to 30 meters (indoors) and 100 meters (outdoors) with XBEE radio Series 1 transceivers
  • Autonomy of more than 7 hours with a standard 1 cell 3.7v LiPo Battery
  • Receiving frequency ranging from 48 to 55Hz.

The components include: (for each hand)

  • Arduino Mini Pro
  • Xbee radio module
  • Inertia Measuring Unit with 9 degrees of freedom, in I2C
  • 6x bend sensor sockets (up to, the 6th is reserved for further thumb movement tracking)
  • >=1x LiPo Batter

For each system:

  • 1x XBee as gateway, connected to a computer
  • 1x XBee Explorer (to connect the gateway to a computer)
  • 1x FTDI driver to program the microcontrollers
  • 1x LiPo battery charger

Inteliglove is paired with Omnitracker, a software developed for real time processing and visualisation of the output data.

 

Technical advisor: Li Li

Chair for Computer Aided Architectural Design ETHz / 2014