Magnus ー
We designed and implemented a magnetic hand exoskeleton, called Magnus, that achieves fast and dexterous finger actuation with a less physical and subjective intervention to the wearer. The exoskeleton houses a finger actuation mechanism for each finger, equipping a pair of an electromagnet and a permanent magnet on a nail, connected by a guide linkage. Due to the mid-air magnetic force-feedback to the finger joints, our hand exoskeleton provides fast and dexterous finger actuation without inducing friction force, lower back-drivability, or extensive muscle fatigue and painful sensations, as seen in those with geared motors and electrical muscle stimulation (EMS), respectively.
Our first demo scenario involves fast finger drumming, assisted by the exoskeleton. Visitors can experience playing complex and high-speed finger drum sequences beyond their original capabilities, while minimizing the sense of intervention from the device compared to other force-feedback systems.
Our second scenario extends to interpersonal high-speed gesture communication between two visitors. A pair of visitors will engage in a first-person shooting game that requires quick decision-making and finger actions. These visitors can experience combined body abilities, such as one visitor assisting the other in shooting so that the latter can concentrate on aiming.
Jun Nishida, Daisuke Tajima, Yasuko Namikawa, and Shunichi Kasahara. 2024. Demonstrating Magnus: A Magnetic Hand Exoskeleton for Fast and Dexterous Finger Actuation. In ACM SIGGRAPH 2024 Emerging Technologies (SIGGRAPH '24). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 4, 1–2. https://doi.org/10.1145/3641517.3664390