Senseglove
Senseglove DK 1.3 in action
Senseglove is a product based company which specializes in developing gloves which let you interact with Virtual Reality based on the principles of Haptics. The glove has 3 primary features: Force feedback, vibro-tactile feedback and motion tracking. Out of those, the force feedback and vibro-tactile feedback come under the domain of Haptics. Integrating the Senseglove with virtual environments has the added benefit of multi-modal feedback and enhances the user experience in virtual reality. Senseglove is currently being used in Virtual Training, VR/AR simulation and for research purposes.
Summary of my internship
I interned in Senseglove for a duration of 8 months in which I focused on characterizing the Electromagnetic brakes which are used in the glove to provide Force Feedback. The estimation of the force at which brakes start slipping is one of the key issues in the design and implementation of the Electromagnetic Brake system used for Force-Feedback in the SenseGlove. The brakes were not characterized previously to understand the slip mechanics. Moreover, the variation of maximum force until the brake starts slipping changed over the usage of the brake was not understood. Finally, which of the areas of the brakes remain in rub against each other while slipping was observed. This observation can further help to optimize the design of the brakes taking into consideration the areas which actually play a role to generate the friction force and which do not.
Design Process Followed