Flexible wearable devices have attracted wide attention in capacious fields because of their real-time and continuous monitoring of human information. The development of flexible sensors and corresponding integration with wearable devices is of great significance to build smart wearable devices. In this work, multi-walled carbon nanotube/polydimethylsiloxane-based (MWCNT/PDMS) resistive strain sensors and pressure sensors were developed to integrate a smart glove for human motion/perception detection. Firstly, MWCNT/PDMS conductive layers with excellent electrical and mechanical properties (resistivity of 2.897 KΩ · cm, elongation at break of 145%) were fabricated via a facile scraping-coating method. Then, a resistive strain sensor with a stable homogeneous structure was developed due to the similar physicochemical properties of the PDMS encapsulation layer and MWCNT/PDMS sensing layer. The resistance changes of the prepared strain sensor exhibited a great linear relationship with the strain. Moreover, it could output obvious repeatable dynamic response signals. It still had good cyclic stability and durability after 180° bending/restoring cycles and 40% stretching/releasing cycles. Secondly, MWCNT/PDMS layers with bioinspired spinous microstructures were formed by a simple sandpaper retransfer process and then assembled face-to-face into a resistive pressure sensor. The pressure sensor presented a linear relationship of relative resistance change and pressure in the range of 0–31.83 KPa with a sensitivity of 0.026 KPa⁻¹, and a sensitivity of 2.769 × 10⁻⁴ KPa⁻¹ over 32 KPa. Furthermore, it responded quickly and kept good cycle stability at 25.78 KPa dynamic loop over 2000 s. Finally, as parts of a wearable device, resistive strain sensors and a pressure sensor were then integrated into different areas of the glove. The cost-effective, multi-functional smart glove can recognize finger bending, gestures, and external mechanical stimuli, which holds great potential in the fields of medical healthcare, human-computer cooperation, and so on.

Hand dexterity is tremendously valuable to robots for task-dependent manipulation and interacting with the world. In this work, we present a novel soft pneumatic dexterous hand, which demonstrates highly dexterous and versatile anthropomorphic properties. Inspired by human hand, the proposed hand possesses 21 degrees of freedoms (DOFs), is implemented in anthropomorphic fingers, soft parallel palm and the ability to spread the fingers with a modular design. The anthropomorphic fingers are designed in accordance with the joint distribution of the human fingers. By using a layered design, each independent actuator is divided into an actuating layer and a contact layer, which allows the grasping mode and the contact mode to be adjusted in real-time. To streamline the creation of the palm and improve the dexterity of the hand, the soft parallel palm is actuated by bellow actuators, designed by using the characteristics of a compact structure and stable movement of the parallel mechanism. Additionally, the bellow actuators are also used to realize the ability to spread the fingers and assist the carpometacarpal (CMC) joint bending of the thumb through the passive deformation of the flexible joint. Through series of experiments, we evaluate the hand by demonstrating its ability to achieve the highest possible score in the Kapandji test for thumb dexterity, to realize all 33 grasp types of the comprehensive GRASP taxonomy, and to interact with humans in the real world.