Analyzing Human Muscle State with Flexible Sensors

Abstract

Analyzing human muscle states has attracted extensive attention. EMG (electromyography) pattern recognition methods based on these works have been proposed for many years. However, uncomfortable wearing and high prices make it inconvenient for motion tracking and muscle analysis by using robotic arms and inertial sensors in daily life. In this study, we propose to use smart clothes integrated with flexible sensors to collect arm motion data, estimate the kinematic information of continuous arm motion, and predict the EMG signal of each arm muscle. Firstly, the neural network regression model integrated with the LSTM (long short-term memory) module is used to continuously estimate the sensor resistances collected by the smart clothes and the angles collected by Kinect. Then, six types of shoulder and elbow movements’ angles and the corresponding EMG signals of 5 subjects are preprocessed and aligned. The stacked regression model based on extremely randomized trees (extra trees) is used for regression. Our experimental results show that the average estimation absolute error from the sensor resistances to the joint angle is 3.45 degrees, and the absolute percentage error from the joint angle to the EMG signal is only 1.82%.