Madglove Sense
Built with Madglove Amsterdam BV.
Madglove Sense started when, in the VU entrepreneurial ecosystem — DLAB and VU StartHub — Olivabot met with Madglove.
The glove
Madglove Assist is a functional orthosis for rehabilitation from home. It supports hand mobility and daily function — keeping control at hand. Without it, many people with reduced hand mobility could not perform daily operations such as eating, writing, and so on. Users talk about picking up things they could not do for years. Physiotherapists talk about fingers opening after two weeks at home, so training in the clinic can start.
An amazing medical device. Madglove’s need was to integrate sensors into it.
The need
No easy challenge. They needed battery power, and sensors that would not interfere with the mechanics of their system. The point of the data: motion — to measure effectiveness of the medical device in the patients’ improvements, and personalized training exercises in collaboration with physiotherapists.
We started in November 2024 with research of different technologies: IMUs, depth cameras, battery-powered systems, and overall possible architecture. The project collaboration went on until June 2026. Overall we delivered many prototypes, hardware and software, for their testing.
We will limit the technical details due to IP protection. Here is an overview of what happened.
Prototypes
We started with a rough prototype for motion detection, non-interfering with the glove, to connect and visualize motion data — lightweight and battery-powered. Another prototype was smoother, smaller, with data sending via a web application (responsive on both mobile and desktop).
Our miniaturization continued with hard technical manual work: soldering tiny batteries to tiny microcontrollers and sensors, and 3D-printing casing that could fit the whole system on a ring, on a finger. Yes, that tiny.
We ended up with smart interconnected sensor devices with integrated AI for machine learning — movement classification and auto detection — that could integrate easily for real-time data monitoring and saving in web applications, with dashboards and analytics.
Vision for physiotherapists
In this consulting job, we also prototyped a web AI-powered application, using computer vision to analyze hand landmarks (each joint of hand and fingers) and translate into coordinates to monitor progress and movement capacity of patients’ hands. Helping physiotherapists save time and be more precise in measuring progress, and design targeted rehab exercises for each patient.
Design for manufacturing
We also helped Madglove’s non-technical team in talks with other companies for design for manufacturing of this new high-tech medical device — with complex electronics, miniaturization, battery-powered telecom, and micro-electromechanical systems.
Results
A lot of work done. Happy with the results. Showing what is possible with technology, and what can be done to help people worldwide.
November 2024 – June 2026, with Madglove Amsterdam BV, in the VU ecosystem of DLAB and StartHub.