electronic interface and signal conditioning circuitry ...

ELECTRONIC INTERFACE AND SIGNAL CONDITIONING CIRCUITRY FOR DATA GLOVE SYSTEMS USEFUL AS 3D HMI TOOLS FOR DISABLED PERSONS Giovanni Saggio, Stefano Bocchetti, Carlo Alberto Pinto and Giancarlo Orengo Dept. of Electronic Engineering, University of Rome “Tor Vergata”, Rome, Italy

Keywords: eywords:

Data glove, Human machine interface.

Abstract: bstract:

environment where move A simple PC screen can be considered as an interface of a virtual environmen nt wh w herre an n uuser seer can can m ca ove objects and interact with them. The interaction tools cann be simply a virtual mouse But mou ousee oorr a ke kkeyboard. eybboa oard oard rd. B ut it is evident how these tools cannot provide an immersive experien experience en nccee ssince ince the hee bbi-dimensionality i--diime mens nsio nsio ns ionaaliity iona t ooff th the screen. So in the latter years the virtual reality is becoming m more more ore an ore or andd mo m re aaccomplished re cccoom mpl plis ished hed by nnew ew hardware interfaces capable to increase the realism degree. Among glove Amonng all, alll, the sensorized al sen nsoorriized gl lov ove iss bbecoming e oming one of the ec more interesting and promising of these interfaces. He Here propose electronic H ere re we pr prop opos op ose the th he elec ctr tronnicc iinterface nterface and signal conditioning circuitry we adopt as the most suitable developed glove lee ffor orr oour ur dev ev vel eloped p dataa gl glov ve sy ssystem. ystem. The same solution we adopted can be usefully extended for other sp specific systems signals pec ecif ific f c syst sttem ems that th treat sig gnaals ls ccoming oming from sensors which read kinematics from disabled persons with rreduced Range Off Motion (RO (ROM) e uc ed u ed dR ange an ge O ge RO OM)) ccapabilities. apabilities.

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INTRODUCTION

Nowadays owadays people with disabilities hhave avee the the possibility via ossibility to communicate with other othe ot h r persons persson ons vvi ia computers, omputers, but most of the peripherals peeri riphherals (keyboard, riph (k key eyboarrd, eyb d, mouse, tablet, ..) cannot bee user-friendly useerr-frie ieennddly l ffor or ssome om ome me disabilities. input methods welcome, isabilities. So new user in npu putt m eth th hod ods ar ods aaree we w elc lcom ome, e, especially residual motor specially the ones that att can can n utilize utiliize ze tthe he res he sid idual mo idu moto to or capabilities disabled Among apabilities of motorr di dis sablled d ppersons. ersonns ns. Am A moon nngg al aalll the methods, he new inputs metho ods ds, th thee ddata ataa gglove love lo lov ve ccan an rresult an esult one ne of the more moree interesting i terest in sttin ingg andd promising proomissiin pr ng solution solution because account ecause it ccan an ttake an ake ak ke in iinto to accou unt nt tthe he sspecific p ci pe cifi cifi fic needs of fic disabled Equivalent mouse isabled uusers. sers. se rs Eq quuiivalent m ousee ccommands ouse ou om omm mmands can be provided motions rovided d by hand d m otions aand n real keyboard nd functions unctio ons can be obtained ons d virtually v rtuallly pressing the keys vi displayed computer isppla l yeed on a compu uteer screen, thanks to the movements measured move ements of fingers m easured by the data glove.

Figure 1: Data glove commands virtual keyboards.

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In addiction In addddicction ttiion n such a dataa glove can furnish new computer comput co mputer mp err interaction int nte teraction possibilities, since allows the user interact user tto us o iin nte t ract in a virtual 3D space rather than mouse mo ouusse and and n keyboard which act in a 2D plane. The T Th he data glove is basically a common glove but with with the characteristic of being endowed with sensors by which it is possible to measure the flexextension and abdu-adduction of finger movements, the wrist postures and the relative position of the hand in the space. Different kinds of sensors, based on different principles, can be adopted to this aim, such as accelerometers, gyroscopes, Hall effect based devices, piezoresistors and so on (Dipietro L. et al., 2008). Using the same kinds of sensors it is possible to measure the Range Of Motion (ROM) of practically any junction of the human body (wrist, knee, neck, elbow, ..) In any case the measured electric signals, coming from the sensors, must be then conditioned, recorded and sent to a receiver for further exploitation, so a wireless transmitter must be designed too. Finally the overall system has to provide real-time measurements of all electric signals coming from the sensing devices. For the electronic interface and the signal conditioning circuitry it is desirable to perform the following features: a) measurement range of the electric values should be sufficiently large, b) the

Saggio G., Bocchetti S., Pinto C. and Orengo G. (2011). ELECTRONIC INTERFACE AND SIGNAL CONDITIONING CIRCUITRY FOR DATA GLOVE SYSTEMS USEFUL AS 3D HMI TOOLS FOR DISABLED PERSONS . In Proceedings of the International Conference on Health Informatics, pages 248-253 DOI: 10.5220/0003157402480253 c SciTePress Copyright