Use of Non-contact Capacitive Sensors to Detect Hand Gestures

The diagnosis and evaluation of Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a task that has been performed through clinical evaluation and subjective scales. Over the years several studies have reported alternative technologies with the purpose of making the follow-up of PD more objective. Usually, in the objective evaluation, inertial sensors are employed for recording movement. A major challenge that exists in the area is related to the monitoring of the technological horizon, to identify and incorporate new technologies that can be used for the evaluation of PD. In this perspective, it was proposed in this research the evaluation of non-contact capacitive sensors to record four motor activities of the hand and wrist (i.e., radial and ulnar deviation, flexion and extension). To accomplish this, it was conduced a comparison between non-contact capacitive sensor and gyroscope. In this study, a correlation analysis in time and frequency domain were carried out. Experimental data were collected from three neurologically healthy individuals. The use of non-contact capacitive sensors introduces an innovative way to measure information from people with PD.