Design of a modular wearable hand motion capture device

• Main Author: Cindy.
• Other Authors: Yeo Song Huat
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2013
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering::Mechanical engineering::Assistive technology
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/54088
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Motion capture has been widely used to record and calculate object motion, position and posture information over a period of time. One application of motion capture in biomedical field is for tracking the rehabilitation progress of stroke patients. The progress of the hand rehabilitation of hemiparesis stroke patients can be monitored by tracking their hand motion and comparing it to the nominal range. However, current glove-based design hand motion capture devices are not suitable as they are difficult to be put on patients with impaired hand motion. This project aims to design and create a suitable motion capture device for hand that can be easily worn by stroke patients to monitor their rehabilitation progress. The key design criterion of this project is wearable with a measurement accuracy of 5. A hand model is first created based on the study of human hand anatomy and the forward kinematics formulated. A hand motion animation program is developed using C++ and OpenGL. This is followed by the evaluation of existing motion capture device, determining design requirements, designing device function structure analysis and generating the design solution matrix. Based on the selected concept, the detail design and embodiment of a prototype is then developed and modeled using Solidworks. The proposed motion capture device consists of a partial glove and a set of Inertial Measurement Units (IMU) sensors in specially designed housings. The key design feature is modularity as the sensors can be attached to individual segment of the fingers independently. The prototype is manufactured using rapid prototyping and tested on healthy subjects. Based on these tests, it is found that the proposed hand motion capture device is able to measure angle data with good measurement accuracy and repeatability, having a small measurement error of 5.