Wearable master device using optical fiber curvature sensors for the disabled

This paper addresses a wearable master device for physically handicapped persons whose arms are disabled. Optical fiber curvature sensors are used to measure the human body motion. For the developed wearable master device, a calibration and mapping method of the sensors is proposed to extract 2-DOF human shoulder motions. An experiment shows that the wearable master device can be used for a 2-DOF input device effectively for handicapped persons. It has also shown that a subject can control a mobile robot with the wearable master device.