Development of a Wireless Electromyography System

Upper-limb amputation imposes a significant burden on amputees thereby restricting them from fully exploring their environments during activities of daily living. Thus, the quality of hand prostheses for patients with upper limb amputation has improved dramatically in recent years. Driving the prosthetic arm automatically by the users is the main challenge that faced the researchers in this field of study. Electromyography (EMG) signals produced by muscle contractions are one important typical control approach. In this paper, a sensor was developed to capture the electrical signals in the muscle of a patient using electromyography sensors. The proposed system has the ability for wirelessly transferring the captured data from the sensory system to computer, which represents the controlling and processing zone. The measured signals are then used to control the prosthesis arms. To achieve this, first the hardware and firmware of the sensor are developed and documented. Two Matlab scripts were developed to display the measured signals in the time and frequency domain. Finally, the characteristics of the developed sensors were verified by means of measurements. These measurements have shown that it is possible to distinguish whether a muscle is flexed or relaxed by means of the measured values captured with the sensor.