Human motion sensor based on Functional Electrical Stimulation and Electromyography analysis

Functional Electrical Stimulation (FES) is used to help patient to recover or improve movement of their limbs after a spinal cord injury, a stroke or other neurological disorders effecting their motor system. The advance in technology in recent years has provided new possibilities for more accurate and better applications of FES. One of the goals of this technology is to develop a device which can stimulate the muscles of a patient to achieve natural and dynamic movements. However in order to achieve this goal there still is more investigation to be done. In this thesis the combination of FES and surface electromyography (sEMG) is used to evaluate a method that could be used to stimulate the muscles to achieve a dynamic movement. In order to achieve this dynamic and natural motion two characteristics are looked for: the position of the limb that has is being stimulated and the best position on the skin where to apply the surface electrical stimulation. FES is used to stimulate synchronously a group of motor fibres. The resulting signal from this stimulation is then recorded by the sEMG and analyzed. This thesis investigates whether this signal contains enough information to obtain the position of the limb that is being stimulated and the best position on the skin where to apply the electrical stimulation. The worked realized in this thesis consists in creating the experimental set-up and developing the adequate analysis to show the feasibility of this concept. Different set-ups are tested on the biceps of 4 healthy subjects while the analysis of the signal is done offline. Experiments using this technique in static conditions are presented to demonstrate accuracies as high as 97% for certain configurations and for subjects with certain physiological characteristics. Also positive results in the detection of the best location where to apply the electrical stimulation are presented. Now that there is a proof-of-concept, a series of next steps are defined with the purpose to develop this technology: test other muscles, increase the population under test, test this technology in real time and dynamic conditions and increase the accuracy of the algorithms.

Subject

FES
motor point
EMG

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Embargo date

2015-07-02

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Student theses

Document type

master thesis

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Thesis_Octavio_Martinez_final.pdf

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