Fusion of IMU and Muscular Information in Order to Solve the Limb Position Effect

Abstract

The main goal of the work hereafter presented is to integrate data about a subject’s body pose with data regarding the muscular activity in the forearm in order to improve the prediction of hand movement intention, particularly with respect to the limb position effect. The efforts to this end were articulated in three fundamental phases. Firstly, a portable and lightweight upper body tracking system was designed, implemented and characterized, particularly with respect to drift. Secondly, offline and online analyses about possible approaches to integrate the data from the body tracking system with different kinds of data measuring muscular activity in the forearm were conducted. Finally, a user study involving telemanipulation using a humanoid platform was conducted with the main goal of evaluating the learning curve of a subject using the upper body tracking system and in order to test some of the offline test results in terms of performance in the execution of daily tasks. Furthermore, this user study allowed to test an alternative control scheme especially suited for transradial amputees, with the main goal to estimate wrist rotation intention without the need to rely on muscular activity information.