A Novel Soft Glove for Hand Tremor Suppression: Evaluation of Layer Jamming Actuator Placement

The following paper presents the concept of a layer jamming based soft glove for hand tremor suppression, its implementation, validation of the soft glove for hand tremor suppression and evaluation of the effect of layer jamming actuator placement. Wearable tremor suppression devices can avoid the side effects which occur due to available medical treatments, but contemporary methods are bulky and negatively affects the voluntary motions of the hand. Hence, a soft tremor suppression device can be developed to overcome the issues faced in contemporary wearable devices. A hand tremor suppression device using layer jamming was proposed in the study. In this study, experimentation for the material selection for layer jamming elements, evaluation of the layer jamming element placement and validation of the soft glove were conducted to characterize and evaluate the performance of the soft glove. Layer jamming material selection was done by measuring the deflection against an applied load. The performance of the soft glove was evaluated by measuring the suppression of a simulated tremor for the dorsal and palmar configurations. Performance evaluation shows a maximum tremor reduction of 78.32% in the palmar side element configuration in comparison to 38.23% in the dorsal side. Performance evaluation shows promising results in the suppression of hand tremors using the proposed soft glove and the results suggest that the palmar side element configuration can achieve higher tremor reduction comparatively.