The Evolution of Gloves as Input Devices
Throughout the years virtual reality is becoming more and more popular and people are becoming more aware of its existence with the development of the VR, the mediums of interacting with the objects within that world are being developed as well. Data Gloves are one of these mediums that are still under development, it is also known as wired gloves or cybergloves and recently was called VR gloves. Data gloves are wearable input devices that have multiple sensors that tracks hand movements which are translated into input information used for various applications like robotics applications and Virtual reality applications and games. It is used to record physical movements, like the rotation of the hands or finger curling, and transform it into digital information. Usually the gloves have tracking devices that track motion which records the rotation and the location of the glove. To capture these movements, interpreter software or drivers are used that are made specially for the gloves so whatever movement is made with your hands/gloves can be turned into inputs for virtual reality programs, virtual reality games or controlling robotics. Although the weird glove is an advanced device that goes under development everyday not many people know about. This article will show what is the glove, how did it start and where did that technology reach today.
How did the Gloves Input Devices Started?
The Data Glove was first developed by Daniel J. Sandin and Thomas DeFanti in 1977 in a research lab in Illinois University in Chicago, it was called The Sayre Glove. It was influenced by an idea that their colleague Richard Sayre had, they built it as a project for the National Endowment for the Arts. What they have used to make the glove is flexible tubes that have a photocell, (a small inexpensive sensor that detect the light if it hits it), on one end and a light source on the other, (just to clear out any confusions these flexible tube are not fiber optics). The light travels through the tubes to the photocell sensors and depending on how much you bend your finger, the more you bend the less light the photocells will receive, then the photocells will measure how much light it is receiving, and based on that it can tell how much you have bent your fingers and transfer it in to in put information. That was the kickoff project of the development of the data glove.
The Evolution of the Gloves Input Devices.
After the Sayer Glove have inspired a lot, researchers in the early years of 1980s at MIT Architecture Machine Group, later in the MIT media lab have developed a Limbs and body position tracker that uses an LED system that is camera-based for computer graphic animation in real-time. By pointing the camera at the LED ornamented glove, it registers the motion of the hand and fingers, this kind of glove was used for motion graphic capturing, was not used to control any device unlike the Sayer Glove.
In 1983 Digital Data Entry Glove was created. An employee in Bell Telephone Laboratories named Gary Grimes made a glove that recognize hand signals and translate it into alphabets, the glove was made recognize 80 special combinations, unfortunately the glove was never put to use and was never commercially available for people to use.
In 1987 DataGlove was developed by Thomas Zimmerman and his partners, the glove can monitor the six degree of freedom of the position and the placements of the hand as well as 10 finger joints. It was a great improvement from the MIT LED Glove or any camera based tracking system technology, because this glove did not relay on line-of-sight observation also have the ability to work in real-time, and because it was made with comfortable material and affordable, researcher commercialized the glove and led to a widespread of the glove around the world.
The power Glove was the first commercially available glove for entertainment prepresses, it was made as controller with low-cost for Nintendo video game company by a company called Mattel toy company. It was made available in the 1989. The power glove was made out of flexible plastic and with a palm made out of Lycra, on the back of the fingers a layer embedded with resistive-ink flex sensors that have the ability to captures the bending of the thumb, index, middle finger and ring finger. Unfortunately, the product was discontinued by Mattel after only two years of development, and if you in desire to acquire one you will have to find a second hand or long stored one. Today a lot of people will get it to test on and do some hacks on it, they have found a way to connected to their personal computer and start experimenting and modifying the glove.
With the development of the virtual reality and the making of the virtual reality arcade and games, a company called W Industries at the time, (now it is called Virtual Entertainment System), have made a glove called Space Glove, it was released in 1991 to go with their virtual system. The glove was made out of flexible plastic that is placed ontop of the hand, rings around fingers and straps the strap the glove around your wrist. The glove is uncomfortable to wear but very responsive to hand movement and finger curling, and it only work with the company’s products.
These are the most famous gloves developed at the time, after that a lot of Gloves where developed specially in the recent days from the 2000s till now.
Where is Glove Input Devices are today?
Today many gloves and similar products are going under development. Most these products can be mostly found in the video games entertainment industry, there are devices that simulates these gloves, it is mostly handheld controllers. Giving examples for these controllers are PlayStation Move from Sony used with their PlayStation Virtual Reality Headset, another controller is the Vive controllers from HTC which used with the HTC Vive Headset only, these two are the top two most popular.
As for actual gloves, there are many that is extremely good and accurate gloves that are under development, some of them are CaptoGlove, Dexmo, Senso VR Gloves, VRfree and VRgluv. Here are some of the promotional videos of these gloves to show cast them.
CaptoGlove
Dexmo
Senso VR Gloves
VRfree
VRgluv
But the most advance glove that is going underdevelopment today is the Glove from Haptx incorporation. The glove that they have developed have extremely accurate trackers not only that but when you try to touch any thing in the virtual world you can feel it on your hand and finger as if you are touching it in real life. Another thing is it have resistors that pull your finger backwards, combining that with the ability to touch things in the virtual world will give you the feeling holding something as of you are holding it in your hand. A famous YouTube Channel Called SmarterEveryDay have featured that glove. You can find the video here.
Experiment
I have conducted an experiment by making an interview with some people to see how popular the Glove as an input device are. First, I have showed them these two photos and asked them if they knew what these are.
About 75% of the people that I have asked did not know what it is. then I told them what it is and asked them if they already knew such technology exist. Some of them knew about it but never saw it, some knew there is something like that but did not know that it was that advanced and the others did not know they exist at all.
In conclusion gloves as an input device have existed since 1977 and still going under development. it went through many evolutions some of them failed and some have succeeded. And it appears that this subject is not popular among people.
References
https://www.microsoft.com/buxtoncollection/a/pdf/cg%20a%20glove%20survey.pdf
