Polymer-optical sensor glove for the precise acquisition of finger and hand movements

• Applicant: Professor Dr.-Ing. Ludger Overmeyer
• Subject Area: Automation, Mechatronics, Control Systems, Intelligent Technical Systems, Robotics ; Production Automation and Assembly Technology
• Term: from 2018 to 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 401649026

The aim of this proposal is to investigate a novel textile based fibre optic sensor glove for the precise acquisition of finger and hand movements. The concept of the sensor glove is based on a textile net structure with integrated fibre optic curvature sensors. The textile net structure is designed to transfer hand and finger movements to the fibre optic curvature sensor network. The curvature sensors are based on multi-mode (MM) polymeric optical fibres (POF) with UV-induced spatially separated fibre Bragg grating (FBG) sensors.Compared to state of the art, the main advantages of the proposed textile based fibre optic sensor glove are the improved wearing comfort, the reduced calibration complexity as well as the user-friendly and cost-efficient coupling of the fibre optic curvature sensors to the interrogation system. The system to be developed, thus, addresses and aims to improve the main limitations of available systems.The scientific objectives and challenges of this research project are (i) the development of a curvature sensor based on a MM-POF with multiplexed FBG sensors, (ii) the development of a textile net structure with integrated fibre optic curvature sensors and (iii) the investigation of the performance of the novel textile based fibre optic sensor glove.Our approach aims at enhanced performance of motion monitoring sensor systems based on optical principles and may open new applications in the field of automatization and production engineering. For instance, the novel sensor glove could be applied in the positioning and mounting of XXL-components or in the human-machine interaction.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Co-Investigators: Professor Dr. Hans-Christian Jabusch; Professor Dr. Bernhard Roth