An electronic glove, developed by Purdue University researchers, offers 'humanlike' features for prosthetic hand users. Source: Purdue University/Chris AdamResearchers at Purdue University have developed an electronic glove (or e-glove) to enhance hand prosthetics, giving them more human-like qualities and offering the wearer sensory perception.

Worn over a hand prosthetic, the new e-glove reportedly adds value to traditional hand prosthetics, which are designed to restore mobility, by offering realistic human hand-like qualities including warmth, softness and the ability to sense pressure and temperature. The development team, led by assistant professor of engineering Chi Hwan Lee, proposes that such enhancements could improve the wearer’s mental health and well-being by enabling them to feel more comfortable wearing the more human hand-like prosthetic in social settings.

The e-glove, which is composed of commercially available nitrile, uses thin and flexible sensors along with miniaturized silicon-based circuit chips to operate. Connected to a specially designed wristwatch, the e-glove offers real-time displays of sensory data as well as remote transmission to the wearer for data processing.

"We developed a novel concept of the soft-packaged, sensor-instrumented e-glove built on a commercial nitrile glove, allowing it to seamlessly fit on arbitrary hand shapes," Lee explained. "The e-glove is configured with a stretchable form of multimodal sensors to collect various information such as pressure, temperature, humidity and electrophysiological biosignals, while simultaneously providing realistic human hand-like softness, appearance and even warmth."

The e-glove is available in an assortment of skin tones and also contains artificial fingernails and lifelike fingerprints to further enhance the human hand-like look and feel of a prosthetic hand. Calling the process of fabricating the e-glove cost-effective and manufacturable in high volumes, researchers are continuing to develop the e-glove by optimizing its design with the hope of soon bringing it to market.

The research appears in the journal NPG Asia Materials.