Abstract
Myoelectric prostheses could enable amputees to better perform daily activities. This paper documents a preliminary investigation to identify muscle fatigue using electromyography (EMG), that could enhance the performance of myoelectric prosthetic devices A low-cost wearable myoelectric armband utilizing brass dry-type electrodes was developed. It was tested against a PowerLab medical-grade EMG machine in terms of providing signals from which muscle fatigue can be successfully interpreted. The extracted features representing muscle fatigue were the integral of time-series EMG (IEMG), root mean square (RMS), mean frequency (MNF) and median frequency (MDF). For both the low-cost armband and the PowerLab machine, IEMG and RMS increased with increasing muscle fatigue, while MNF and MDF decreased—which were expected results. The armband and PowerLab devices showed similar performances when compared using RMS and IEMG features (average error of 35% and correlation of 0.71), but not using MNF and MDF features (average error of 112% and correlation of 0.13). This suggests that the low-cost EMG armband may be able to acquire EMG of sufficient quality to enable muscle fatigue interpretation. However, further testing and development is necessary.
