The gestural joystick and the efficacy of path tortuosity in rubbled environments

In this paper a gestural joystick embedded in safety gloves for applications requiring 2-D pointing control similar to a mouse or joystick, is described. A gestural joystick is a pointing device based on hand gestures. The WRIST (wearable responder interface for search tasks) system is being developed specifically for hazardous environments that require gloves, which normally interfere with the operation of conventional computer interfaces. Rather than competing with the human/computer interface, WRIST uses the cumbersome gloves to interpret the gestures, rendering them both a necessary piece of safety equipment as well as necessary piece of the human/robot interface.