Design Summary - Analysis Draft #2

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In the article entitled "Force-Sensing Gloves Cloud Control An iPhone By Detecting Gestures and How Objects Are Gripped," Owen (2019) mentions that Apple wanted to create a glove technically capable of engaging with technologies for individuals. This glove is made of fabric meshed with conductive layers that sense the forces applied in the glove when the user touches a surface. In addition, this glove will detect how much pressure is applied and the number of fingers used. The author also states that Apple will look at different ways a user can control an application without interacting with the touchscreen. The glove will include conductive strands that are woven together with normal threads and thus able to monitor contact outside while the inside contains sensors for compression from the fingers. Owen also adds that it opens opportunities to replace handheld controllers in VR and AR. 

While Owen provides substantial details on what material is incorporated in the gloves and how electronic components are integrated together in the gloves, he fails to describe how bulky or heavy the product will be. 

Firstly, Owen fails to provide details on the bulkiness of the gloves. In an annual conference report from the 26th Annual International Conference of the IEEE EMBS by Tam et al. (2004), there is a technology developed for tracking of muscle movement, but it is too bulky. Wireless electrodes are attached to the skin recording electrical activity of the muscle tissue these sensors are also known as electromyography (EMG), converting muscle contraptions to voltage which measure applied forces by the hands. However, this device consists of 1 transmitter and a receiver both which are fairly the size of the hands and are too bulky to be carried around. Hence it will not be very practical for apple to create this force sensing gloves.

In addition, an article by J. Cecil, A. Kanchanapiboon (2007) further supports how bulky the gloves might be. In this article, it discusses the use of a virtual reality (VR) system to help in the assembly and disassembly of items in the workplace, which consists of a set of gloves connected to a VR set. However, the user will have to carry the entire VR system around, and this setup would be too bulky and heavy for practical use. Hence, this shows that force-sensing gloves are too bulky with the current technology available.

However, the article by Spliz et al. (2019) mentions that the force- sensing gloves in the article is using a type of fabric that can sense pressure and is light-weight. The glove measures the force applied by the patients, which can give them more objective visualization of their healing process. The device uses a sensor they developed based on piezoresistive fabric where electrical resistance changes with force applied, not only that but the material is also light and flexible, using Flex Sensor by Spectrasymbol on joints of the fingers sensing the bending of fingers with these two sensors incorporated in on each joint, which can determine how the force is applied and show how items are gripped. With the help of this article using sensors which are provided, we can deduce that the material and size of sensors are small making the force-sensing glove more feasible and more desired by not only people in the medical industry.

In conclusion, more research is needed for the product. Although the size of the transmitter and receiver can be reduced as technology advances there are still other issues to be tackled. Force sensing gloves may soon be worn by everyone one day.


References

Cecil, J., & Kanchanapiboon, A. (2006). Virtual engineering approaches in product and process design. The International Journal of Advanced Manufacturing Technology, 31(9-10), 846–856. doi: 10.1007/s00170-005-0267-7

Spilz, A., Engleder, T., Munz, M., et al. (2019). Development of a smart fabric force-sensing glove for physiotherapeutic Applications. Current Directions in Biomedical Engineering, 5(1), pp. 513-515. Retrieved 6 Feb. 2020, from doi:10.1515/cdbme-2019-0129

Tam W., et al. A wireless device for measuring hand-applied forces. (2005). In A wireless device for measuring hand-applied forces. doi: 10.1109/IEMBS.2004.1403622

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