Surface Electromyography (SEMG) Based Robotic Assistive Device

An EMG-based exoskeleton robot system that assist the rehabilitation process of upper limb has been proposed in this project. The exoskeleton has four degree of freedom (DOF) capable of various motion such as shoulder flexion/extension, abduction/adduction and internal/external rotation, and elbow flexion/extension. This project report describes the hardware design of the exoskeleton robot and the control method after analysing the work of other researchers. The skin surface electromyography (SEMG) signals of muscles and the joint force/torque of the user are used as the input information for the proposed controller. The robot’s motion can be controlled by both the SEMG signals and force/torque signals. Support vector machine (SVM) has been implemented to estimate user’s intended motion based on the SEMG signals. The proposed control system has only been tested in computer simulation. Thus, further testing and analysis are required before the robot prototype can be built.