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Updated: Jun 26, 2026

Estimation of Contact Regions Between Hands and Objects During Human Multi-Digit Grasping
Published on: April 21, 2023
Information capacity of the thumb and the index finger in communication
Zhi-Hong Mao1, Heung-No Lee, Robert J Sclabassi
1Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15261, USA. maozh@engr.pitt.edu
Abstract:
Due to its large number of degrees of freedom and extensive connection to the brain, the human hand has been used to create channels of communication for a variety of human-machine systems. However, a fundamental question about the hand channel is still unanswered: what is its information capacity? This study aims to provide quantitative indication of effectiveness of the hand as a communication channel. We estimated that per gesture, the thumb and the index finger may deliver at most 10 and 7 bits of information, respectively. Based on this, we derived an upper bound for the information capacity of the hand in gesture-based communication: 150 b/s. Knowing this bound is critical to evaluating the potential and limitation of the hand channel for various forms of human-machine interactions.
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