A Low-Cost, Accurate, and Easily-Worn E-Skin and IMU Hand Kinematic Measurement System

Stroke and other neurological injuries impair hand function. Although rehabilitation therapists encourage reintegration of the affected hand into daily activities, there are few tools that can be worn during everyday life that provide quantitative feedback on how much or how effectively the hand is used. Wearable sensors that can accurately track hand movements and are easily applied and removed can present intuitive feedback that could motivate hand use similarly to how pedometers encourage walking. While tracking all the hand and finger joints is needed for scientific studies, under-sensorization, or using fewer sensors than required for tracking all degrees of freedom, may suffice for providing users feedback about hand use in everyday life. Further, it may enable a wearable device to be more easily donned and doffed, more power efficient, and more cost efficient. Here we develop a low-cost, multi-sensor, wireless wearable system for tracking selected hand and wrist movements during everyday life. The system includes fabricated soft, stretchable “e-skin” bend sensors and off-the-shelf inertial measurement units (IMUs) that accurately measure finger bend angles and wrist movements. The system also includes an application and removal protocol that enabled naïve unimpaired participants to apply and remove the system in ~5 min and ~4 min, respectively. The system cost was $111 per device, with prices falling to an estimate of $55 when manufactured at scale. This hand wearable demonstrates accurate kinematic tracking and user-friendly donning/doffing workflows for unimpaired participants, making it a promising platform for everyday hand tracking. Future work will extend this platform to the movement-impaired population for neurorehabilitation applications.