Wearable band for hand gesture recognition based on strain sensors

A novel fully wearable system based on a smart wristband equipped with stretchable strain gauge sensors and readout electronics have been assembled and tested to detect a set of movements of a hand crucial in rehabilitation procedures. The high sensitivity of the active devices embedded on the wristband do not need a direct contact with the skin, thus maximizing the comfort on the arm of the tester. The gestures done with the device have been auto-labeled by comparing the signals detected in real-time by the sensors with a commercial infrared device (Leap motion). Finally, the system has been evaluated with two machine-learning algorithms Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA) and Support Vector Machine (SVM), reaching a reproducibility of 98% and 94%, respectively.