Biosensors Based Controller for Small Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Navigation

This work describes a system that uses electromyography (EMG) signals obtained from muscle sensors and an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) for signal classification and pattern recognition that is used to control a small unmanned aerial vehicle using specific arm movements. The main objective of this endeavor is the development an intelligent interface that allows the user to control the flight of a drone beyond direct manual control. The biosensors used in this work were the MyoWare Muscle sensors which contain two EMG electrodes and were used to collect signals from the posterior (extensor) and anterior (flexor) forearm, and the bicep. The collection of the raw signals from each sensor were performed using an Arduino Uno. Data processing algorithms were developed with the purpose of classifying the signals generated by the arm’s muscles when performing specific movements, namely: flexing, resting, arm-up, and arm motion from right to left. With these arm motions, roll control of the drone was achieved. MATLAB software was utilized to condition the signals and prepare them for the classification stage. To generate the input vector for the ANN and perform the classification, the root mean squared, and the standard deviation were processed for the signals from each electrode. The neuromuscular information was trained using an ANN with a single 10 neurons hidden layer to categorize the four targets. The result of the classification shows that an accuracy of 97.5% was obtained for a single user. Afterwards, classification results were used to generate the appropriate control signals from the computer to the drone through a Wi-Fi network connection. These procedures were successfully tested, where the drone responded successfully in real time to the commanded inputs.