The past 20 years has seen a significant influence of science and technology in everyday life. Today it is almost part of our culture. Computers have become a common house hold necessity. It advancement is signified by the continuos stream of inventions and ever evolving technology over the years. Since the invention of the micro-processor the goals of scientists has been aimed at automating manual tasks . Consequently virtual reality is one such technique that is revolutionising human life.
This article is concerned with a dataglove as an input device to a computer. It investigates the various scopes of use of this unique device. It explains the construction and structure of the dataglove , and finally deals with the future possibilities it.
Traditional input devices (e.g.: keyboard) do not use natural gestures. Mice and light pens allow for two dimensional input (plus a button to depress) and enable a limited set of gestures for inputs. The dataglove is mainly used as a hand gesture input device to Virtual Reality (VR) systems as well as non virtual (real systems). This is different from the rest in that as it goes beyond the previous generations of input devices giving the computer the ability to recognise human gestures , instead of requiring the user to learn the correct sequences of control.
Virtual reality is a set of perceived relationships ( i.e. vision , sound) from a medium called cyberspace. "Cyberspace on the other hand is a theatrical medium which gives people the feeling that they have been transported from an ordinary physical world to another world filled with pure imagination. " The term Virtual reality (VR) can have several meanings . To some it is a collection of technologies, that is head mounted displays, a glove as an input device and a sound. To others the term may be stretched to include conventional books, movies or pure fantasy and imagination. VR can be thought of as the next human computer interface, which has great potential throughout industry, commerce and leisure.
While most input devices offer one, two or three degrees of freedom, the glove is unique in that it offers multiple degrees of freedom for each finger and hand as well. This permits the user to communicate to the computer , a far richer picture of his or her intentions than most other devices.
A glove is generally quite lightweight , with flexible sensors which accurately and repeatedly measure the position and movements of the fingers and wrist. Pressure sensors on the gloves palms measure occurring during object grasping. Gloves can have a varying number of sensors depending the application they are used for. Most common models have in-between 12 and 24 sensors. These sensors are bend sensitive and their resistance varies linearly with the bend. Sensors are extremely thin and flexible and provide an undetectable resistance to bending. Since the sensors exhibit low sensitivity to their positions over finger joint and to the joint radii of curvature, gloves provide high quality measurements over a wide range.
Glove variations include ones with open finger tips, which enable users to type, write and grab objects while wearing the glove.
The glove is connected to the computer via an instrumentation unit. This instrumentation unit is connected to the computer by a serial cable. The instrumentation unit provides a variety of convenient functions and features, including time-stamp , dataglove status , external sampling synchronisation and analogue sensor outputs.
Software is necessary or calibration of the glove and is used to display event virtually.
Prices of typical gloves are as follows.
18- Sensor glove $ 9,800 US
19- Sensor glove $ 14,500 US
Power consumed 2.5 Watts.
Typical interface: RS-232 with selectable baud rates up to 11.3Kbaud.
The glove can be used as a communication instrument. With information about finger positions and hand orientation, various sign language messages can be sent using a dataglove.
A typical example of sign language is ASL (American Sign Language). Speaks of ASL employ gestures to communicate with each other. It is mainly used for communication among deaf people of between deaf and non-deaf. It does not make use of sounds , but uses hand movement as the primary component of communication, together with body and facial expressions. Many words or ideas have ASL signs, When a word does not have a sign it is spelt out using a manual alphabet.
Such a language can be easily input using a data glove, to a computer. Using appropriate software a dictionary of gestures can be made. This provides endless possibilities for the outside world to communicate with the deaf.
Translating ASL to English is not easy due to the individual variations in exact gesture movements. The additional problem of knowing when gestures start and end add to the complexity. Furthermore there are only a limited number of gestures a person can remember.
Telecontrol :- Here robots and machines are controlled manually from a remote site. Generally these machines operate in areas not accessible to humans due to. Examples of such applications include control of robots in outer space, controlling machines I nuclear plant or even bomb disposal.
Surgical applications :- When delicate operations are needed such a device can give precise control. This is probably most useful in keyhole surgery and eye operations.
If made more economical gloves can be used in computer games, just like an ordinary joystick or mouse. Adventure games will have so much more power. People will be able to act as someone else, under varying circumstances and a different reality.
Gloves can be used in 3d modelling. Operators will be able to physically pick up , turn and observe objects they are creating. It will create the perfect design environment to engineers.
The glove can be used to train people to write or even play instruments. The glove can be further extended to a body suit (Already exists) and such suits could be useful in training athletes. It can teach athletes various skills, trace muscle movements and prevent them from injury . Other possibilities include teaching people to drive. It is possible to build a gesture phone . This will be an asset to the deaf . Moreover a universal hand input language will have to developed to provide the necessary framework for expanding the applications and portability of the glove. It is very likely that the glove will become as common input device as a mouse or a keyboard. Its possibilities are endless and are only limited by ones imagination.
http://www.virtex.com/
http://vision.ucsd.edu/ieeeMultimedia/node6.html
http://swhite.me.washington.edu/asme/tushar.html#inputdev
http://deeitis1.ai.iit.nrc.ca/~martin/pages/interfaces.html
micosoft encarta
http://peipa.essex.ac.uk/vr/technology/hardware/gloves/DataGlove.html
http://www-cad.eecs.berkeley.edu/HomePages/michaels/research/input/glove.html