A study on effects of muscle fatigue on EMG-based control for human upper-limb power-assist

It may be difficult task for physically weak elderly, disabled and injured individuals to perform the day to day activities in their life. Therefore, many assistive devices have been developed in order to improve the quality of life of those people. Especially upper-limb power-assist exoskeletons have been developed since the upper limb motions are vital for the daily activities. Electromyography (EMG) signals of the upper limb muscles have sometimes been used as a primary signal to control the power assist exoskeletons since the EMG signals directly reflect the motion intention of the user. But one of the main obstacles for EMG based controller is the muscle fatigue, because the muscle fatigue might change the EMG patterns. It is important for power-assist exoskeleton to correctly assist the user for longer period of time. But it has high probability of user muscles been fatigued because users getting more and more exhausted at the end of the day. Therefore it is necessary to consider the variations of EMG signals due to the effect of muscle fatigue. In this paper it demonstrates the study which was conducted to find out the effects of muscle fatigue on the three EMG features derived from the raw EMG signals of the Bicep brachii, Deltoid-posterior, Deltoid-anterior and Supinator muscles of the upper limb. Shoulder vertical flexion/extension, shoulder abduction/adduction, elbow flexion/extension and forearm pronation/supination motions were carried out before and after a set of muscle fatiguing exercises. The three features computed in this experiment were RMS (Root Mean Square), MPF (Mean Power Frequency) and a spectral feature (FInsm5) which was proposed by Dimitrov. Comparison results of these three features of all muscles before and after the fatiguing exercises showed an percentage increase of the RMS and FInsm5 features whereas MPF showed a percentage decrease with respect to the before fatiguing conditions. The result showed that the EMG RMS may not a reliable feature to use as the only input signal in EMG based control for human upper-limb power assist in the muscle fatiguing conditions. Therefore, it is suggested that a modification method for compensating the effect of muscle fatigue is required on the EMG based control in order to have a long and reliable use of the human upper-limb power assist exoskeletons.