An Embedded Electromyogram Signal Acquisition Device.

In this study, we design an embedded surface EMG acquisition device to conveniently collect human surface EMG signals, pursue more intelligent human-computer interactions in exoskeleton robots, and enable exoskeleton robots to synchronize with or even respond to user actions in advance. The device has the characteristics of low cost, miniaturization, and strong compatibility, and it can acquire eight-channel surface EMG signals in real time while retaining the possibility of expanding the channel. This paper introduces the design and function of the embedded EMG acquisition device in detail, which includes the use of wired transmission to adapt to complex electromagnetic environments, light signals to indicate signal strength, and an embedded processing chip to reduce signal noise and perform filtering. The test results show that the device can effectively collect the original EMG signal, which provides a scheme for improving the level of human-computer interactions and enhancing the robustness and intelligence of exoskeleton equipment. The development of this device provides a new possibility for the intellectualization of exoskeleton systems and reductions in their cost.

An Adaptively Weighted Averaging Method for Regional Time Series Extraction of fMRI-Based Brain Decoding.

Brain decoding that classifies cognitive states using the functional fluctuations of the brain can provide insightful information for understanding the brain mechanisms of cognitive functions. Among the common procedures of decoding the brain cognitive states with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), extracting the time series of each brain region after brain parcellation traditionally averages across the voxels within a brain region. This neglects the spatial information among the voxels and the requirement of extracting information for the downstream tasks. In this study, we propose to use a fully connected neural network that is jointly trained with the brain decoder to perform an adaptively weighted average across the voxels within each brain region. We perform extensive evaluations by cognitive state decoding, manifold learning, and interpretability analysis on the Human Connectome Project (HCP) dataset. The performance comparison of the cognitive state decoding presents an accuracy increase of up to 5% and stable accuracy improvement under different time window sizes, resampling sizes, and training data sizes. The results of manifold learning show that our method presents a considerable separability among cognitive states and basically excludes subject-specific information. The interpretability analysis shows that our method can identify reasonable brain regions corresponding to each cognitive state. Our study would aid the improvement of the basic pipeline of fMRI processing.

Mordo2: A Personalization Framework for Silent Command Recognition.

Wearable human-computer interactions in daily life are increasingly encouraged by the prevalence of intelligent wearables. It poses a demanding requirement of micro-interaction and minimizing social awkwardness. Our previous work demonstrated the feasibility of recognizing silent commands through around-ear biosensors with the limitation of user adaptation. In this work, we ease the limitation by a personalization framework that integrates spectral factorization of signals, temporal confidence rejection and commonly used transfer learning algorithms. Specifically, we first empirically formulate the user adaptation issue by presenting the accuracies of applying transfer learning algorithms to our previous method. Second, we improve the signal-to-noise ratio by proposing the supervised spectral factorization method that learns the amplitude and phase mappings between around-ear signals and the signals of articulated facial muscles. Third, we leverage the time continuity of commands and introduce the time decay into confidence rejection. Finally, extensive experiments have been conducted to evaluate the feasibility and improvements. The results indicate an average accuracy of 92.38% which is significantly larger than solely using transfer learning algorithms. And a comparable accuracy can be achieved with significantly reduced data of new users. The overall performance shows the framework can significantly improve the accuracy of user adaptations. The work would aid a further step toward commercial products for silent command recognition and inspire the solution to the user adaptation challenge of wearable human-computer interactions.

A Novel Passive Occupational Shoulder Exoskeleton With Adjustable Peak Assistive Torque Angle For Overhead Tasks.

OBJECTIVE: Overhead tasks are a primary inducement to work-related musculoskeletal disorders. Aiming to reduce shoulder physical loads, passive shoulder exoskeletons are increasingly prevalent in the industry due to their lightweight, affordability, and effectiveness. However, they can only handle specific tasks and struggle to balance compactness with a sufficient range of motion effectively. METHOD: We proposed a novel passive occupational shoulder exoskeleton designed to handle various overhead tasks at different arm elevation angles, ensuring sufficient ROM while maintaining compactness. By formulating kinematic models and simulations, an ergonomic shoulder structure was developed. Then, we presented a torque generator equipped with an adjustable peak assistive torque angle to switch between low and high assistance phases through a passive clutch mechanism. Ten healthy participants were recruited to validate its functionality by performing the screwing task. RESULTS: Measured range of motion results demonstrated that the exoskeleton can ensure a sufficient ROM in both sagittal (164°) and horizontal (158°) flexion/extension movements. The experimental results of the screwing task showed that the exoskeleton could reduce muscle activation (up to 49.6%), perceived effort and frustration, and provide an improved user experience (scored 79.7 out of 100). CONCLUSION: These results indicate that the proposed exoskeleton can guarantee natural movements and provide efficient assistance during overhead work, and thus have the potential to reduce the risk of musculoskeletal disorders. SIGNIFICANCE: The proposed exoskeleton provides insights into multi-task adaptability and efficient assistance, highlighting the potential for expanding the application of exoskeletons.

Knee Flexion-Assisted Method for Human-Exoskeleton System.

The knee has gradually become an important research target for the lower extremity exoskeleton. However, the issue that whether the flexion-assisted profile based on the contractile element (CE) is effective throughout the gait is still a research gap. In this study, we first analyze the effective flexion-assisted method through the passive element's (PE) energy storage and release mechanism. Specifically, ensuring assisting within an entire joint power period and the human's active movement is a prerequisite for the CE-based flexion-assisted method. Second, we design the enhanced adaptive oscillator (EAO) to ensure the human's active movement and the integrity of the assistance profile. Third, a fundamental frequency estimation based on discrete Fourier transform (DFT) is proposed to shorten the convergence time of EAO significantly. The finite state machine (FSM) is designed to improve the stability and practicality of EAO. Finally, we demonstrate the effectiveness of the prerequisite condition for the CE-based flexion-assisted method by using electromyography (EMG) and metabolic indicators in experiments. In particular, for the knee joint, CE-based flexion assistance should be within an entire joint power period rather than just in the negative power phase. Ensuring the human's active movement will also significantly reduce the activation of antagonistic muscles. This study will aid in designing assistive methods from the perspective of natural human actuation and apply the EAO to the human-exoskeleton system.

A Novel sEMG-Based Gait Phase-Kinematics-Coupled Predictor and Its Interaction With Exoskeletons.

The interaction between human and exoskeletons increasingly relies on the precise decoding of human motion. One main issue of the current motion decoding algorithms is that seldom algorithms provide both discrete motion patterns (e.g., gait phases) and continuous motion parameters (e.g., kinematics). In this paper, we propose a novel algorithm that uses the surface electromyography (sEMG) signals that are generated prior to their corresponding motions to perform both gait phase recognition and lower-limb kinematics prediction. Particularly, we first propose an end-to-end architecture that uses the gait phase and EMG signals as the priori of the kinematics predictor. In so doing, the prediction of kinematics can be enhanced by the ahead-of-motion property of sEMG and quasi-periodicity of gait phases. Second, we propose to select the optimal muscle set and reduce the number of sensors according to the muscle effects in a gait cycle. Finally, we experimentally investigate how the assistance of exoskeletons can affect the motion intent predictor, and we propose a novel paradigm to make the predictor adapt to the change of data distribution caused by the exoskeleton assistance. The experiments on 10 subjects demonstrate the effectiveness of our algorithm and reveal the interaction between assistance and the kinematics predictor. This study would aid the design of exoskeleton-oriented motion-decoding and human-machine interaction methods.