A High-Performance Flexible Strain Sensor for Smart Glove in Human-Machine Interaction

Abstract

Flexible wearable devices have garnered significant attention in human-machine interaction research due to their outstanding adaptability, and excellent compliance with human motions. In particular, these devices hold great potential in robot master-slave control applications, enabling precise gesture recognition and seamless interaction. In this study, we propose a highly sensitive, flexible wearable sensor tailored specifically for robot master-slave control systems. The sensor leverages the advantages of flexible materials and simple fabrication processes, exhibiting excellent performance characteristics such as high sensitivity, superior linearity, and a broad detection range. Owing to these desirable attributes, the proposed sensors can effectively and reliably detect subtle changes in operator gestures. Moreover, we successfully integrate these flexible sensors into textile-based gloves, demonstrating their practical feasibility. Experimental results demonstrate that operator gestures can be precisely captured by the sensor-embedded textile gloves, and these gestures can be accurately mapped onto the dexterous robotic hands, enabling robots to reproduce operator movements with high fidelity. The enhanced integration and robust performance of the proposed system provide a significant advancement toward intuitive and accurate human-robot interaction.