A Miniaturized Device for Measuring Flexure Angle of Flexible Fiber Data Gloves

Abstract

Angle measuring devices are widely used in many fields, such as wearable devices, human-computer interaction interfaces, and intelligent surgical robots. Compared with electrical signal sensors, optical angle sensors provide a new way for the implementation of wearable data gloves because they are immune to electromagnetic interference and can be integrated in multiple channels. In this paper, an angle measuring device for flexible fiber data gloves is designed, which is composed of an LED light source, a CMOS image sensor, and two coupling lenses. Through a fiber coupling lens, the divergence angle of the LED light source matches with the numerical aperture of the flexible fiber and high-efficiency energy coupling is achieved. An imaging coupling lens with 3 mm length is used to ensure that each fiber image of the fiber bundles occupies more than 64 pixels on the CMOS photosensitive surface, achieving a 16-bit data accuracy of signal measurement. The experimental results show that the device can measure the angle change of the data gloves of 5 finger flexures at the same time, and the flexure resolution of each finger is better than 0.5°.