A Systematic Review on Custom Data Gloves

TL;DR

This systematic review analyzes 177 journal articles on custom, passive or hybrid data gloves to understand hardware design choices, sensing modalities, and application relevance. It follows PRISMA guidelines to classify studies by sensor type, DoFs tracked, and application, highlighting a strong emphasis on motion tracking with flex sensors and IMUs, and comparatively limited adoption of tactile sensing. Key findings show that most gloves are passive, with flex sensors dominating older work and IMUs enabling higher DoF tracking, while the thumb's trapeziometacarpal joint is often underrepresented. The study identifies critical gaps in reproducibility, standardization, and experimental validation, and advocates modular, shareable hardware design to accelerate cross-study reuse and impact in human-machine interaction and related fields.

Abstract

Hands are a fundamental tool humans use to interact with the environment and objects. Through hand motions, we can obtain information about the shape and materials of the surfaces we touch, modify our surroundings by interacting with objects, manipulate objects and tools, or communicate with other people by leveraging the power of gestures. For these reasons, sensorized gloves, which can collect information about hand motions and interactions, have been of interest since the 1980s in various fields, such as Human-Machine Interaction (HMI) and the analysis and control of human motions. Over the last 40 years, research in this field explored different technological approaches and contributed to the popularity of wearable custom and commercial products targeting hand sensorization. Despite a positive research trend, these instruments are not widespread yet outside research environments and devices aimed at research are often ad hoc solutions with a low chance of being reused. This paper aims to provide a systematic literature review for custom gloves to analyze their main characteristics and critical issues, from the type and number of sensors to the limitations due to device encumbrance. The collection of this information lays the foundation for a standardization process necessary for future breakthroughs in this research field.

Figures (11)

• Figure 1: Hands are of the utmost importance for a variety of human behaviors, such as sensing, manipulation, tool use, or communication.
• Figure 2: The selection criteria of the systematic review process. Each stage is associated with the used filtering criterion and the corresponding number of remaining articles.
• Figure 3: The trend in the number of journal articles about sensorized custom data gloves over time.
• Figure 4: The percentage of articles considering each application field on the total number of selected articles. A publication can only belong to a single category and None has been used for articles without a specific application.
• Figure 5: A human hand kinematic model from phdthesis considering all DoFs except for the wrist.