Synergy-based optimal design of hand pose sensing

This paper investigates the optimal design of low-cost gloves for hand pose sensing. This problem becomes particularly relevant when limits on the production costs of sensing gloves are taken into account. These cost constraints may limit both the number and the quality of sensors used as well as the technology adopted. For this reason, an optimal distribution of sensors on the glove during the design phase is mandatory in order to obtain good hand pose reconstruction. In this paper, by exploiting the knowledge on how humans most frequently use their hands in grasping tasks, we study the problem of how and where to place sensors on the glove in order to get the maximum information about the actual hand posture, and hence minimize in average the reconstruction error. Simulations and experiments of reconstruction performance are reported to validate the proposed optimal design of sensing devices.