The Reusable Electrode of EMG Sensor for Capturing The Calf Muscle Activities

The most commonly used of the electromyography (EMG) sensor to record the muscle signal activities is using the gelled electrode. However, for the sensitive skin, it may cause irritation. Another weakness is the gelled electrode needed to be replaced or add some gel in a period of time. So that, it is inconvenient if this electrode was used to record the muscle activities signal in period of time. Therefore, this paper presented the reusable electrode which can be used several times without adding some gel or even changing the pads. The reusable electrode was made by attaching a conductive fabric on the stretch fabric material as the substitution of gelled electrode. The placement of the conductive fabric depended on the configuration of the EMG sensor which been used. To verify the performance of the proposed electrode, we compared it to the gelled electrode in real-time experiments. The experiments were done to collect the activity signal of the calf according to the human gait cycle. From the experiment results, the proposed electrode able to record the calf signal activities as better as gelled electrode, and even better for some users.