Wearable Haptic Glove with McKibben Actuators and Optical Tracking for Virtual Environments

For touching and manipulating objects in virtual environments conveniently, wearable haptic interfaces are required. In this paper, a concept of combining a McKibben pneumatic muscle based wearable haptic glove with an optical hand tracking system is presented. Dynamic characteristics of the muscle are measured as well as the static accuracy of the tracking system. The results are discussed, and possible improvements are considered. In addition to this, the concept of finger tracking is examined, and its integration to our system is given thought.