An instrumented glove for small primates

Abstract

The Cymanus is a novel flex sensor glove for measuring hand kinematics in primates. It was used to monitor 9 joints of a rhesus macaque performing a grasping task with 25 objects. Over 6 days, the monkey tolerated the glove and showed no significant impairment in performance. The sensors linearly tracked joint angles, with joint trajectories preserved over days. Angular positions discriminated objects as accurately as electromyograms recorded simultaneously from 24 arm and hand muscles, and were maximally informative of object identity at the end of reach-to-grasp. In a further validation of the glove, muscle activity controlling a joint was correlated with the joint's angular acceleration 70 ms later.