According to an estimate, up to five percent of people aged between 16 and 84 do not have a very firm grip on objects. This affects the quality of work as well as compromises on the health of the worker.With the original aim of assisting the astronauts in NASA, RoboGlove has now been redeveloped for its utilisation in medical and industrial fields.
General Motors in collaboration with NASA and Bio servo, a Swedish Medical company, started with a mission to provide gloves to its workers for a solid and secure grip.
According to Tomas Ward: “Combining the best of three worlds – space technology from NASA, engineering from GM and medtech from Bioservo – in a new industrial glove could lead to industrial scale use of the technology,”
These gloves were designed with the aim of providing the workers in General Motors with, easy to use technology for handling the heavy machinery and operating the tools, whereas BioServos intended to use these for the rehabilitation of the people with weakening grip.
They enable in the reduction of the repetitive stress on the joints, arm muscles and tendons which causes extreme fatigue during work. They also increase the gripping power of the wearer.
“The successor to RoboGlove can reduce the amount of force that a worker needs to exert when operating a tool for an extended time or with repetitive motions,” said Kurt Wiese, VP of GM Global Manufacturing Engineering.
The gloves powered by battery consist of actuators and sensing devices which are supposed to act similar to tendons and muscles in a human hand. With this great partnership not only do we expect great results for the workers but also great engineering too.
Check out this video of “Power Glove” below.
