Fog Computing-Enabled Multi-User Interaction System using Soft Robotic Gloves

Soft robotics, with its flexible and lightweight structures, offers innovative solutions in fields such as medicine, rehabilitation, and assistive technologies. The development of textile-based soft robotics has significantly reduced integration challenges in wearable technologies. This study presents a novel fog computing architecture designed to support multi-user and multi-device operations used in textile-based soft robotics systems. For patients experiencing muscle weakness in one hand, Textile-based Internet of Things (T-IoT) gloves enable simultaneous bilateral actions such as grasping, lifting, and carrying through a mirroring technique. Sensor data from a sensing T-IoT glove worn on the healthy hand are processed by the fog computing system and transmitted to an actuating T-IoT glove worn on the impaired hand, enabling coordinated movement of both hands. By integrating various concurrency and interprocess communication techniques into worker devices, the system can serve up to 10 users with a single worker and up to 26 users with three workers operating simultaneously. In this way, the proposed system provides real-time computational services for multi-user scenarios while also delivering an assistive technology for patients.