A Simple sEMG-Based Measure of Muscular Recruitment Variability During Pediatric Walking

Human motor development is characterized by adaptive variability that can be measured by means of minimally-invasive techniques based on surface electromyography signals. The basic motor repertoire formed during childhood continues to develop and change throughout life, enabling increasingly precise and complex motor skills. To quantify the variability during walking of the propulsion and control action of two of the main muscles of the leg, the tibialis anterior and the gastrocnemius lateralis, in this work an easy-to-measure quantitative metric based on the processing of the surface electromyography signals is used. Measurements are collected from two populations of 30 walking adults and children, respectively, and, for the first time to the authors' best knowledge, the metric is shown to be able to effectively discriminate pediatric motor capabilities. Additional work is foreseen to assess the signal variability within the two main gait phases, to further validate the detected age-related difference.