A new waterproof e-glove designed to enable divers to communicate with their partners or with those on the surface has been developed by a team of researchers from Qingdao University in China.

According to the researchers, the new technology can wirelessly transmit hand gestures made underwater to a computer that translates the hand gestures into actual messages like ‘Ok’, ‘Exit,’ or ‘Shark.’

Source: ACS Nano

Although divers are trained to make hand gestures to their partners to indicate that they are ok or to warn them of some nearby danger, those hand signals can sometimes be obscured by distance, darkness or dirty water.

As such, the team outfitted an underwater glove with electronic sensors capable of translating hand motions. However, the team first had to make the electronic sensors waterproof while also retaining the glove’s flexibility.

To accomplish this, the researchers fabricated waterproof sensors based on flexible microscopic pillars — similar to the tube-like feet of a starfish. The team used laser writing tools to create an array of those micropillars on a thin film of polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS), which is a waterproof plastic used in the manufacture of contact lenses. Once the PDMS array was coated with a conductive layer of silver, the two films were then sandwiched together with the pillars facing inward, resulting in a waterproof sensor.

Further, the team packed 10 of these waterproof sensors in self-adhesive bandages and subsequently sewed them over the prototype glove’s knuckles and first finger joints.

Meanwhile, the researchers tasked a volunteer with creating a hand-gesture vocabulary by making 16 hand gestures that the computer could understand, including ‘Ok’ and ‘Exit.’ As those gestures were made, the team captured the accompanying electronic signals created by the e-glove sensors. Then, a machine learning technique used for translating sign language into words was used to build a computer program capable of translating the e-glove’s gestures into actual messages.

The researchers concluded, following a series of tests, that the program successfully translated hand gestures — made both on land and underwater — with a 99.8% rate of accuracy.

The waterproof e-glove is detailed in the article “Underwater Gesture Recognition Meta-Gloves for Marine Immersive Communication” which appears in the journal ACS Publications.