Build Your Own Gestural Glove Controller

About the Glove

I am planning to create a D.I.Y. glove conroller that can be used to control multiple softwares, from music creation and production, to live visual manipulation. It is greatly inspired by the Mi.Mu glove which is another gestural control device, primarily being used for musical purposes, including production and live performance (see video below). The idea behind it is that it provides a much more organic workflow through higher levels of freedom and detail than those found using traditional tools such as faders. This is the benefit of a glove controller that inspired me, because of my musical background. The uses of a tool such as this are, however, much wider than just music and as I am working on my glove design I will be testing it not only myself (as a musician) but with Julia a drama student and actress studying in London. I will also be comminicating with the team behind the Mi.Mu glove, not only with my instructor Dr. Kelly Snook, but also Rachel Freire, the designer of the textile elements of the glove who is based out of London. I am planning to visit her workshop at least once throughout my process.


A video explaining the musical capabilities of Mi.mu's gloves.


My Plans

I intend to create a glove that is modular - this would allow people to purchase the modules they did not want to craft themselves, or felt unable to, for example if they did not have the skills or machines to make them. I will try to design each element from scratch, whilst also keeping the glove functional, the idea behind this is to have a truly D.I.Y. approach, making modular elements that it would be possible for people to make themselves at home, given a list of specific materials and tools.

The mi.mu glove, from which my fabrication is inspired, is made of a series of sensors connected to a board. This board is mounted to a comminications cuff, this harbours another board which translates raw data to OSC and transmits it wirelessly to the custom glover software, with whih my glove will also be designed to work. The Mi.mu glove communicates through OSC over WiFi as this proved the most accurate channel for conveying sensor readings. I want to maintain this as I believe it is core to the subtlty and flexibility of the glove's function.


A disection of the parts that make up a Mi.mu glove.



Visit to Rachel's London Workshop - (1/2/18)

Rachel is the textile designer and researcher at Mi.mu, she is responsibe for fabricating the textile elements of the glove, including drawing up patterns and selecting the fabrics from which the glove is made; as well as research into smart electronic textiles. I had the fantatsic opportunity of visiting Rachel before embarking on my project, in order to see her at work. I learned a lot about how Mi.mu manufactue their gloves and also about how they prototype new versions. I now have a pair of gloves, without electronic elements, that I very minimally helped her to finish glueing. These should prove useful in working on my own designs, as I saw how they were made and I have them to explore additions I could make and limitations of the pattern. We also talked about issues of intellectual property and non-disclosure around Mi.mu, which I will have to factor into my work and documentation, especially if I am to work with members of the company on my designs, making sure that my work is significantly different from the work at Mi.mu.

We discussed the sewing process at length as it was happening, working out ways to simplify it for D.I.Y. production that don't require specialised equipment or skillset. These included straightening of wavy seams, removing more complex non-essential parts and generally simplifying the pattern and materials in order to increase the ease of fabrication.

During the afternoon Kelly raised the possibility of using the gloves as VR controllers which is very exciting for me, as well as having gloves that bypass traditional sensoring through the use of smart textiles. Rachel had also made some 3D printed hands in order to display and store the gloves which I would love to make as well, in order to display my own designs.

Before I arrived at Rachel's workshop I also briefly met Julia, an acting student who is friends with Kelly and currently testing gloves. I will be testing some of my more finished fabrications with her in order to get some 'outsider' feedback on their functionality, from somebody who has tried using other gloves and is familiar with the software that they run on.

Designing a Cuff

As part of the CAD task for week 2 I decided to designa cuff for my final project, I initially made a sketch of the cuff pattern and then transferred it to Adobe Illustrator using the 'trace' function. See the initial sketch here:


Drawn by hand


I hadn't previously wanted to use Illustrator as it isn't open source and I don't currently own it. This means all the work I do using it would have to be on-site at the lab, despite this it is the best software for what I'm doing due to it's accuracy and stability. I began to transfer my sketch into illustrator.


From paper to screen


Illustrator does have the option to scan in and vectorize an image from a drawing, however I didn't want to do this as I felt I should learn how to start drawing from scratch in Illustrator, my sketch was also had a few marks on the page from rubbings, so may have come out a little messy.

Once I had drawn in my pattern I created three variations as I will need to laser cut three different layers for the cuff: the top, the bottom and the glue to bind them together. Having two layers of material will allow me to conceal wires and to hold integral components such as the battery and IMU inside the cuff. I will eventually be using neoprene to make my cuff as it is durable, soft and can be laser cut and heat pressed (the glue is activated by heat). To create the pattern in Illustrator I used the rectabgle tool to form the main base, the curve tool for the outer parts, the rectangle again for the IMU and battery and then the ellipses tool for the poppers. Poppers with an X are female and those with a + are male. I then tidied up the skteches with grouping and the scissor tool. They eventually looked like this (these models are facing with the front downwards as this is how i drew the initial sketch):


top layer


glue layer


bottom layer


The cuff contains space for the IMU, circuit-board and battery, as well as functionality for people who may want to go even further and make sensory equipment that goes up the arm, with snaps attached to the back. I may swap out the connecting poppers on the cuff for velcro at a later date if this proves to be more user friendly.

After I had finished each layer I attempted to export a .dxf file from Illustrator, however it gave me an unexplained error message. In order to work around this I knew that Rhino could open .ai files so I saved as this and exported as a .dxf from there into Fusion 360. At this point I also had a look at Rhino 3D design software for the task I needed to complete, however I find Fusion more user friendly for simple purposes, I may have to use Rhino at a later date when modelling more complex things such as enclosures for hardware or storage/display devices. The 3D model from Fusion can be seen below. It will be thinner in rpoduction, I just did not have the fabrics with me to measure their depth when I created the model.


3D Model


Making a Cuff

Learning to Sew a Glove