Mixed reality-integrated soft wearable biosensing glove for manipulating objects

Recent advances in flexible sensors and wireless electronics have driven the development of lightweight and ergonomic wearable sensing gloves. Such gloves can be employed in mixed reality (MR) environments to give haptic capabilities during interactions with various objects. However, no prior study shows a quantitative measurement of physical user interactions of object manipulation in MR. Here, we report an MR-integrated soft bioelectronic system on a glove for quantifying the changes in the user's pinching tasks. We use nanomanufacturing techniques to fabricate flexible sensors, wireless circuits, and stretchable interconnectors seamlessly integrated with a wearable glove. The wearable biosensing glove with an integrated capacitive pressure sensor evaluates how users interact directly and indirectly interact with objects. The direct mode describes a user's direct touching and manipulating objects in MR. In contrast, in the indirect mode, objects are located far away and touched via a narrow light beam. The virtual object measurement parameters include mass, movement latency, dynamic friction coefficient, angular drag coefficient, and linear drag coefficient. The experimental results with human subjects show positive, linear relationships between pinching force and dynamic friction coefficient and mass parameters during the direct manipulation mode. Collectively, the MR-enabled wearable biosensing glove system offers unique advantages in detecting physical interactions and sensory feedback for various rehabilitation applications and MR human-machine interfaces.