A Novel Waterproof sEMG Electrode Based on Conductive Silicone for Underwater Signal Recognition

Current prosthetic hands remain challenging to use in water conditions for amputees, such as bathing, swimming, and washing. In order to improve the living conditions of amputees, we developed a waterproof conductive silicone electrode and proposed a corresponding signal recognition method. To evaluate the signal acquisition performance of the electrode, we designed two experiments to compare the conductive silicone electrode with the Ag/AgCl electrode according to acquired surface electromyography (sEMG) signals. For the first experiment, we acquired sEMG signals simultaneously by two kinds of the electrode on flexor carpi radialis, and the correlation coefficient of signals is 0.8752. In the second experiment, we used two kinds of electrodes to record sEMG signals, and the recognition accuracy has no significant difference. The results of the two experiments can show that the proposed electrode can be used for sEMG signal acquisition. Further, we developed an experiment to prove the feasibility of underwater signal acquisition by the proposed electrode. We acquired two-channel signals using the conductive silicone electrode in the water condition, and the recognition accuracy can still reach 93.41%. After sEMG signals were performed high-pass filtering, the accuracy is 94.44%. The experimental results demonstrate that we can use the electrode to acquire sEMG signals in the water condition. Based on the developed waterproof sEMG electrode and signal recognition system, it is now possible for amputees to use prosthetic hands in water conditions.