Ergonomic Glove: Design and Evaluation

A new design for gloves was developed based on the principle of selective protection, where protective material is introduced in varying levels over different parts of the glove, in order to provide protection where it is most needed, and at the same time preserve the desirable dexterity and strength capabilities of the barehand, optimizing the trade-off between protection and performance. The pattern for selective protection was arrived at based on existing research, and two pairs of gloves incorporating different levels of protection have been prototyped and are currently being tested using a battery of performance tests and an Algometer test for pressure sensitivity. A battery of tests was developed to evaluate a new glove design which used the principle of selective levels of protection over different parts of the hand, in order to maximize protection, and minimize loss of dexterity. The test battery comprised of four dexterity tasks and a maximal voluntary grip strength task. The battery assessed the performance of 5 hand conditions, barehand, single glove (one layer), double glove (two layers), and two prototype gloves, one with one layer of protection (contour glove) and the other with four layers of protection over selected parts of the hand (laminar glove). The evaluation compared the performance of the prototype gloves developed with respect to the performance with the double layer glove and the single layer glove. The results indicated that the performance of the prototype gloves was comparable, and that the performance times for the double glove and the two prototype gloves tested were not significantly different. For the test of grip strength, the two prototype gloves tested enabled better performance than the double glove. The assembly task performance for the prototype II (laminar glove) was significantly lower than that of the other glove types tested