Flexible Strain Sensor-Based Data Glove for Gesture Interaction in the Metaverse: A Review

The rise of the metaverse concept has brought about widespread attention in wearable gesture recognition devices. Data gloves based on flexible strain sensors have been favoured by researchers owing to their low cost, light weight, direct and continuous monitoring of finger movements. In this review, we first compare the advantages and disadvantages of four different approaches based on the vision sensors, myoelectric sensors, inertial and magnetic sensors, and flexible strain sensors in designing data gloves, and demonstrate the superiority of the flexible strain sensor-based data glove used for metaverse applications. Next, some latest commercial data gloves are exampled and the function modules of the data gloves are presented based on the flexible strain sensors. Meanwhile, the potential applications of gesture recognition in the metaverse are summarized in diversified fields. Finally, the existing problems and development prospects of the current data gloves based on flexible strain sensors are concluded. We are optimistic that novel flexible strain sensor-based data gloves will make transformational impact to realize accurate, low-latency, and immersive gesture interaction in the metaverse.