More marvels you can perform with a sensory glove

I work with grabbing the physical objects for a project with the Italian Space Agency with the aim of helping astronauts to avoid activities conducted outside of the International Space Station. 

AVA is a very, very high-risk activity. Once every four AVAs, NASA records a potentially dangerous problem for the astronauts. So, I was tasked with finding an alternative method to work with the equipment outside of the space station, but allowing the astronaut using the equipment to remain inside and out of harm's way. The answer was the sensory glove. With our sensory glove, you can grab physical objects that are far away from you and this can be particularly convenient when an object is potentially dangerous or too heavy to be lifted by your hand or too fragile to be held by the human hand. Astronauts can use the glove to drive the bionic hand similar to the human one. The bionic hand being outside the space station while they are safely inside the station. 

Ok, yes indeed you are not an astronaut but do you like playing an instrument? Maybe the piano but you don’t have a piano. No problem, you can play with a sensory glove. You can easily find a new way to play without having to clear space in your room for a real piano. The sensory glove also opens up a way to new social interactions. Therefore, letting individuals communicate with gestures. Each gesture representing a word or concept. Some time ago, I asked some students of mine to develop, under my supervision, of course, algorithms of artificial intelligence to learn from the measure of gestures of the glove and to translate those gestures into a written text. The results, this video shows you my Italian students thanking the commission judging his final thesis for his university degree. 

Do you know someone who underwent surgery? Unfortunately, you learn about the surgeon’s skill level only after the surgery. If you are curious, you might want to know more about the procedure and the level of skill required a little bit earlier. With the sensory glove, you can. I measured top-level surgeons, very high-level surgeons. We used the glove during various procedures and found their dexterities very similar. In another case, I measured the dexterities of junior subjects and the way of moving their hands in procedures was noticeably different from the top-level surgeons. Now, I can attribute a score to every surgeon. As you can probably guess, they are not so happy about this, but patients definitely appreciate it. However, taking the opposite view, the junior surgeons can self-evaluate their dexterity and I can 8encourage them to work towards the higher score which would be in the higher levels of safety for the patient. 

Another serious application comes from MedSensation. This developed a sensory glove called Glove Tricorder with the aim of allowing patients to perform certain self-diagnosis of breast cancer. Just wearing the glove, the subject can measure the pressure that is applied to the breast and the level of pressure helps to indicate the presence of a tumour. Finally, I bet you didn’t know that a sensory glove is worn by Formula One drivers. The glove is to monitor some vital signs such as the amount of oxygen in the blood to highlight any injury that is affecting braking and so on. So now I have given a thorough introduction to all of the benefits and opportunities that a sensory glove technology opens, I now challenge you to find new possible applications for the glove. Be creative and I’m sure you will find a great new use that us scientists have yet to consider.