Abstract
In cold climates, working outdoors requires wearing gloves strongly for not only warming hands but protecting hands from being frostbitten based on the medical point of view. Gloves for such purposes have been designed in accordance with established practice depending on designers' experiences in terms of its shape and materials. Unfortunately no research work concerning their functionalities and manupilabilites has been done up to this moment in spite that gloves play an important role in such environment. In the light of those aforementioned, a study to investigate the functionalities and manipulabilites of gloved fingers was began by interviewing some members of Japan Antarctic Research Expedition. The consequence indicated that they always pulled a glove off a dominant hand when they handled or pinched small mechanical or electrical parts such as bolt and cable, and fine-tuned some measuring instrument. Then the electromyography tests and sensory evaluation by inquiry to the test subjects were carried out using three off-the-shelf gloves which were selected by the Peg-Board tests.
