Neuromuscular State Estimation via Space-by-Time Neural Signal Decomposition

Robotic exoskeletons for the hand are being explored to improve health, safety, and physical performance. However, much research effort is needed to establish reliable models of human behavior for effective human-robot interaction control. In this work, surface electromyography is used to measure and model muscle activity of healthy participants performing quasi-isometric and dynamic hand exercises. Non-negative matrix tri-factorization (NM3F) is used to extract hidden neuromuscular parameters encoded in spatial and temporal muscle synergies, which are used to estimate probabilistic linear models of intent, effort, and fatigue. This paper thereby presents steps toward reliable modeling of nonlinear time-varying hand neuromuscular dynamics for intuitive and robust human-robot interaction.