Development of Arduino Glove-Based Autonomous

Categories: Artificial Intelligence Digital Era

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Introduction

The main purpose of this research is to introduce a device for interaction between human and computer. Particularly, Arduino glove is proposed in this paper to identify the free movements of the hand and fingers which could be used as an input for other systems. As the key component of this research, the toy car is used; however, any other devices such as robot arms, helicopters, quadcopters as well as other interactive devices could be used. The input of the system is controlled by the sensors which are represented by flex sensor and is used to capture bending angle of a finger.

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The gyro sensor is used to capture hand rotation. However, the special construction consists of potentiometers, springs, and a thread is proposed in this paper for future development. This will replace the conventional flex sensor and will reduce the production cost. First wired glove named Sayre glove was developed in 1977 by de Fanti and Sandin [1]. The basic idea included introducing flexible tubes with light source and photocell that is mounted on a finger and based on its movement light intensity would vary that will cause a change in voltage in photocells.

First gloves including MIT LED glove and digital entry data glove were used for research purposes and were never commercialized. However, their prototype was used in developing a data gloves, more advanced wired gloves with a variety of sensors. Introducing flex sensors has solved accuracy and comfort issues associated with earlier gloves. Flex sensors are basically thin films that have carbon elements where t h e resistance varies as that thin substrate bends [2].

A model car based on Arduino neuron is utilizing ANN is proposed in [4]. The research proposed the learning and following method for this autonomous car through the neural network. In another research, a system using Arduino, Bluetooth, and Processing was developed to allow the user to specify desired finger gestures for controlling a variety of robotic devices [5]. In a similar research, authors discuss the use of the glove to control a video game application for rehabilitation of stroke patients [6]. In another research, design and development of an Intelligent Haptic Robot-Glove (IHRG) for the rehabilitation of the patients that have a diagnosis of a cerebrovascular accident is discussed [7].

SYSTEM OVERVIEW

A. Transmitter

The system’s transmitter is shown in Fig. 1, consists of flex sensor, gyro sensor and 2. 4GHz RF transceiver (NRF24L01). All are connected to Arduino Mega 2556. Gyro sensor identifies any angular inclination of the finger. It is connected to two analog pins of the Arduino which has a resolution of 1023 bits each: one for vertical angle and another for a horizontal angle. Figure 1. Circuit diagram of the system’s transmitter Flex sensor is attached to the glove near the finger. W hen the finger moves, it changes the shape of the flex sensor and its resistance value changes because of the shape 2017 21st International Conference on System Theory, Control and Computing (ICSTCC)978-1-5386-3842-2/17/$31. 00 ©2017 IEEE 212change. Flex sensor is also connected to an analog pin of Arduino but the pin cannot read the resistance of the sensor which changes due to movements of the finger. For this reason, it is connected to Arduino through 22 kΩ-resistor and as the resistance of the sensor is changed, the voltage drop across the resistor also changes which could be read by Arduino through one of the analog pins. The resistance of the sensor changes from 9. 5 kΩ to 20 kΩ which indicates that the voltage drops. The last part of the transmitter is 2. 4 GHz RF transceiver module (NRF24L01) which is required to perform wireless communication between transmitting and receiving parts of the system. Initially, XBee shield for Arduino was designed to be utilized, however, due to its high cost which is $40, it is replaced by the cheaper and simpler 2. 4 GHz RF transceiver module which costs only $2. The main disadvantage is that it cannot be operated in a network of other transceivers, however, the communication between transmitting and receiving part is required for this research without any uplink.

B. Receiver

In this work, the receiver is represented by a simple toy car which is controlled by the glove. The schematic diagram of the receiver i s shown in Fig. 2. It includes two DC motors: one for forward as well as backward movements and another for the left and right turns. The speed of the car is controlled by the finger’s movements and it linearly dependents to the angle of finger’s bending which is identified by the flex sensor or potentiometer. It means that if the finger is bent at a maximum angle, then the speed of the car is maximum, and if the finger is straight then the speed of the car is zero. The 2. 4 GHz RF transceiver module (NRF24L01) is used to receive information from the glove. The voltage of Arduino is not enough to control DC motors speed. Due to this, additional voltage is used to drive the motors. In order to supply this additional voltage, PN2222 NPN- transistor is used. This current is dependent on the input sent from the transmitter. Moreover, there could be some negative current from DC motors which can damage the transistor or Arduino board. In order to block this current, IN4001 diode is used to pass only positive current. Figure 2. Circuit diagram of the system’s receiver C. Proposed construction In this research, a special construction consists of potentiometers, springs, and threads are developed as shown in Fig. 3 in order to use it instead of flex sensors in order to reduce cost. The main function is to identify the movements of the fingers. The proposed construction consists of the threads which connect each finger to different potentiometers. When a person moves his finger, it pulls the thread which is attached to the potentiometer and it changes the resistance value of t h e potentiometer that is read by Arduino. The springs should be attached to bring back the potentiometer to its initial position if the finger moves in another direction. The cost of a flex sensor is about $14, whereas the cost of a potentiometer with spring and thread is $1, which means that assuming five flex sensors are required for five fingers, the total cost of the glove could be reduced by $57 as in [3].

However, due to lack of required parts to build the proposed construction, the analysis and implementation are made for the system consisted of flex sensor for identifying movements of the fingers, while the proposed construction has the same analysis besides different resistance value.

RESULTS AND ANALYSIS

A. Linear dependence of flex sensor Figure 4. Measurement of the resistance of flex sensor for different angles of flexion As it is mentioned earlier, flex sensor changes its resistance when it is bent. It is used to identify the angle of finger’s movements. In order to obtain these fingers’ movements, the resistance of flex sensor was measured for 213different angles of bending (flexion) as it is shown in Fig. 4. The measurement results are summarized in Table 1 and it can be seen that the resistance of flex sensor ranges from 9. 5 kΩ to 20 kΩ. Moreover, it should be noted that greater angle of flexion leads to greater resistance of the sensor.

DISCUSSION

The glove proposed in this paper can provide full degree of freedom of hand and finger’s movements if the number of flex sensors or potentiometers is increased to five, i. e. if each finger is attached to a flex sensor or potentiometer. Due to cost reduction purpose, one flex sensor is used and tested in real time. The real-time data could be recorded and stored for further analysis and to improve the performance. The receiver of the system is represented by a toy car, however, various devices could be used. The key novelty that makes this system different from others is that the proposed system consists of potentiometers, springs, and threads to reduce the cost of the system by nearly $60 compared to the gloves where flex sensors are used. Currently, the conventional sensors for human-computer interaction gloves are expensive. In order to further reduce the cost of the proposed system, particular chips and circuits of Arduino such as a microprocessor, analog to digital converter, pulse width modulation circuit, and a timer can be used instead of the embedded microcontroller board. As a part of the continuation of this project, a 3D software model of the hand can be modeled in AutoCAD and integrate into Matlab. With the help of proposed Arduino glove in this paper, this 3D model could have any degree of freedom of real human hand such as; any inclination of the hand and fingers. Moreover, some particular sequence of movements could be saved in flash memory which could be assigned to particular output for multiple applications. As a result, thousands of output results could be derived using only one hand.

KEY ADVANTAGES AND APPLICATIONS

It has low-cost components which cost approximately $60, whereas the conventional system costs $150. This glove’s control unit can be reprogrammed to control any radio controlled device. In addition, an analog input value of the resistance can directly be used to control the speed of the motor. It has a compact design and does not require breadboard or additional shield. Comfortable gloves can be selected to wear which is also light and handy. Wireless RF24I01 module can control the car up to 50m distance. It’s also available, reliable and cost-efficient compared to XBee module. It has reliable sensors which generate a signal without delay in 15m with high precision. It also does not require calibration. Moreover, it can be used in surveillance as well as in data acquisition purpose using a camera. Furthermore, various sensors can be mounted on top of a car to monitor and collect data in hazardous environments. Possible applications are in controlling moving objects such as drones, electric skateboards, and construction cranes. Additionally, it can be used in a robotic hand which performs motion detection and tracking in real time.

CONCLUSIONS

A low-cost human-computer interaction device represented by Arduino glove is proposed in this project. The glove provides full degree of freedom of hand and finger’s movements. The receiver of the system is represented by toy car; however, many other devices such as robot gripper, helicopters, and quadcopters could be developed and controlled by it. Especial construction consists of flex sensors, nRF24LO1 RF transceiver, and Arduino Nano which reduce the development cost of the system compared to the gloves use XBee integrated with Arduino Mega and Arduino Uno boards. To conclude, the overall development cost of the system can further be reduced by replacing flex sensor with a potentiometer as proposed without having any effect on the performance of the system.