A Study on Electromyography Signal as a Controller

Human computer interaction (HCI) is the study of interfaces between human and computer. When an input keyboard is pressed the output is displayed in the monitor is a simple example of human and computer interaction. World Wide Web is yet another example of HCI. HCI is everywhere and has become an important aspect in human life. HCI have many subfields and one among them is the study of biosignals. Signals that are generated from living body during muscle contraction, eye movement, brain signal are biosignals and these signals have potential for developing an interface for human computer interaction. There are many such bio electric signals which can be made to use for developing interface and that can be done by acquiring these signals which will form a linkage with the computer technique. These types of signals are brain signal called Electroencephalogram (EEG), heart signal Electrocardiogram (ECG), eye movement signal Electrooculogram (EOG) and muscle signalElectromyogram (EMG). The paper focuses on the study of muscle signal controller as HCI, EMG signals are captured during contraction of a skeletal muscle. The signal is then amplified and converted into usable signals that will be fed as an input to computer and can be used for controlling certain devices

Data Quality and Reliability Assessment of Wearable EMG and IMU Sensor for Construction Activity Recognition

The workforce shortage is one of the significant problems in the construction industry. To overcome the challenges due to workforce shortage, various researchers have proposed wearable sensor-based systems in the area of construction safety and health. Although sensors provide rich and detailed information, not all sensors can be used for construction applications. This study evaluates the data quality and reliability of forearm electromyography (EMG) and inertial measurement unit (IMU) of armband sensors for construction activity classification. To achieve the proposed objective, the forearm EMG and IMU data collected from eight participants while performing construction activities such as screwing, wrenching, lifting, and carrying on two different days were used to analyze the data quality and reliability for activity recognition through seven different experiments. The results of these experiments show that the armband sensor data quality is comparable to the conventional EMG and IMU sensors with excellent relative and absolute reliability between trials for all the five activities. The activity classification results were highly reliable, with minimal change in classification accuracies for both the days. Moreover, the results conclude that the combined EMG and IMU models classify activities with higher accuracies compared to individual sensor models

Genetic Algorithm-Based Motion Estimation Method using Orientations and EMGs for Robot Controls

Demand for interactive wearable devices is rapidly increasing with the development of smart devices. To accurately utilize wearable devices for remote robot controls, limited data should be analyzed and utilized efficiently. For example, the motions by a wearable device, called Myo device, can be estimated by measuring its orientation, and calculating a Bayesian probability based on these orientation data. Given that Myo device can measure various types of data, the accuracy of its motion estimation can be increased by utilizing these additional types of data. This paper proposes a motion estimation method based on weighted Bayesian probability and concurrently measured data, orientations and electromyograms (EMG). The most probable motion among estimated is treated as a final estimated motion. Thus, recognition accuracy can be improved when compared to the traditional methods that employ only a single type of data. In our experiments, seven subjects perform five predefined motions. When orientation is measured by the traditional methods, the sum of the motion estimation errors is 37.3%; likewise, when only EMG data are used, the error in motion estimation by the proposed method was also 37.3%. The proposed combined method has an error of 25%. Therefore, the proposed method reduces motion estimation errors by 12%