Across the globe the life expectancy has seen an improvement due to improved healthcare, and to some extent due to contribution of technology. Following is the data published by one of the prominent newspapers about life expectancy in India and it clearly shows the upward trend.

The population of aged people is thus increasing which is definitely a good thing but it also brings some challenges that need attention. At old age naturally the body becomes week and loses strength and as a result the ability of holding & gripping objects like tumbler, water bottle, utensils, door knob for opening or closing the door etc reduces. In addition there may be people who have certain disability where they have lost strength in their arms and hands and find it difficult to hold objects. It is observed that some of these objects as discussed above or some other objects of daily use that are heavy and require strength are normally metallic objects. So one of my students, Arjun Sharma came up with this idea of developing a glove that could hold metallic object and could be of assistance to old people or disable people. I encouraged him to file a patent for the idea and in this article I am sharing this innovation with you.

So this is a light weight electromagnetic glove for gripping metallic objects. It is light weight because it is made up of special polymer that contains a foaming agent. As shown in the picture below, it is a novel idea, where a glove would consist of polymer solenoid tubes on which copper wires are wound and will act as magnet. Electronic circuitry is developed with ON/OFF control that would provide a varying current to the solenoid tubes to activate the magnet. Solenoid tube is there in each finger of the glove. User’s hand could easily slid into to the glove. The switch is conveniently located so the user could operate it with his thumb.

It is understandable that user may not only come across only metallic objects in daily routine that are heavy but we have tackled this problem for metallic objects only. If such a product would to the market then desired users could find it very useful and then there will be enormous scope of improving the product.

By - Neeraj Kumar, Asst. Prof. ECE, Chitkara University, H.P.

References:-

1. https://www.google.ch/patents/US8347414
2. https://www.google.co.in/patents/US20060185057
3. https://www.timesofindia.com