Control of Upper Limb Active Prosthesis Using Surface Electromyography

Electromyographic prosthesis with higher degrees of freedom is an expanding area of research. In this paper, active prosthesis with four degrees of freedom has been investigated, which can be used to fit a limb with amputation below elbow. The system comprises of multichannel inputs which correspond to the flexion and extension as well as supination and pronation. To find maximum surface neural activity, accurate placement of electrodes has been carried out on 10 subjects aged between 22-30 years. Signals (0-500 hertz) acquired from contracting voluntary muscles with minimum cross talk and common mode noise. Clean filtered EMG signal is then amplified precisely. Finally digitization is being done to drive bionic hand. Practical demonstration on a simple DC motor proved providential using this method for the two motions of an actual human arm. EMG Signals emanating from muscles dedicated to individual fingers have been recorded. Moreover modern classifiers; KNN and NN have been investigated carefully with selected features through different time and noise levels.