Abstract
Hands are used to make delicate motions in our daily lives. For the purposes of protecting hands and improving work efficiency, a variety of hand tools and gloves have been invented and are widely used. With the advances in technology, new types of hand wearable devices, such as hand exosckeletons, have become more popular. These devices are equipped with sensors and some other elements, which broadens potential applications. Previous studies on these new types of wearable hand devices mainly focused on mechanical design and their applications. The issues of fitness and safety, however, were hardly concerned. Therefore, this study aims to construct a comprehensive hand anthropometric database and hand sizing system, so as to provide design recommendation with all kinds of hand tools and devices. There are three parts of experiments in this study, including the measurement of hand dimensions, pulling forces at finger joints, and flexion angles at finger joints. Data were obtained from Taiwanese subjects at the age of 18-30 years old. In experiment 1, 101 males and 101 females were recruited, with a total of 50 hand dimensions (22 lengths, 12 breadths, 2 thickness, and 14 phalanges length while digit flex) collected. In experiment 2, 57 males and 77 females were recruited, with totally 9 pulling forces at finger joints collected. In experiment 3, 30 males and 30 females were recruited, with a total of 23 flexion angles at finger joints collected in 3 different postures. Finally, the data collected in experiment 1 was applied to construct a hand sizing system, which consists of 6 size categories for males (with the coverage of 91.1%), 5 size categories for females (with the coverage of 92.4%), and 10 size categories for both males and females (with the coverage of 97.0%). The results of this study can facilitate the design of not only new types of wearable hand devices but also traditional hand tools and gloves, which is expected to improve the degree of fitness and user satisfaction.