General Purpose Reusable Mechanical Glove

This project is aimed at developing a general-purpose reusable glove that allows users to freely don gloves in a moment’s notice when coming in contact with contaminated surfaces in this COVID-19 pandemic. The mechanical glove is composed of three major linkages in the housing, the palm and the four long fingers fully 3D printed. The mechanism implemented to tackle the retraction and extension of the glove relies on two distinct actuation techniques: cable-driven retraction for the palm and belt-driven shafts for the fingers. The dexterity of the user while the glove is equipped is evaluated with the Kapandji test and Feix’s Grasp Taxonomy whereas the performance of the gloves is tested through a grip force setup as well as a retraction and extension mechanism time testing. The prototype developed is a product of low cost with sufficient functionalities and comfort paired with a highly reproducible retraction and extension mechanism.