F-Glove: A glove with force-audio sensory substitution system for diabetic patients

Some diabetic patients experience difficulties in modulating the grip force magnitude when they manipulate objects using their hands. This difficulty is caused by the sensory loss at the fingertips that impairs the feedback loop between the brain and the aforementioned sensors. In this paper, we present a sensory substitution system called “F-Glove”, which is aimed at helping diabetic patients to manipulate objects more efficiently by using appropriate forces. This is achieved by substituting the force felt at the fingertips when grip an object with an audio feedback displayed through the earphones of a mobile phone. The patient wears a glove integrated with pressure sensors mounted on the fingertips, and the sensors´ pressure signals are conditioned and wirelessly transmitted to a mobile phone interface to display an audio with a volume linearly proportional to the pressure applied by the fingers of patients.