Biomedical Engineering and Bioengineering Commons^™

Real-Time Control Of A Virtual Hand Using Surface Electromyography, Nathan Griffin, Alexander Kobilnyk

Summer Scholarship, Creative Arts and Research Projects (SCARP)

Most multi-articulate prostheses allow the user to control the prosthesis through a range of pre-determined grip patterns with fixed force outputs. Although these pre-determined movements can make the prosthesis more reliable, user commands are limited to these grips and cannot be controlled naturally in real-time. Using surface electromyography (sEMG) and a modified Kalman Filter, upper limb amputees can intuitively control arm prostheses with independent, proportional control. We created an inexpensive sleeve of 32, dry sEMG electrodes (plus reference and ground) and built a graphical user interface in Matlab to train and control an 8 degree-of-freedom virtual arm (MuJoCo, Roboti). First, …