Electromyography is the measurement of the electrical activity produced by skeletal muscles, captured by surface or intramuscular electrodes. The resulting signals reflect motor-unit recruitment and can be processed to infer intended movement and muscular effort. In robotics it provides a biosignal interface for prosthetic control, exoskeleton actuation and gesture recognition.
Overview
- Surface electrodes are non-invasive; intramuscular needles give finer motor-unit detail.
- Raw signals are filtered, rectified and feature-extracted before classification.
- Bridges human intent to machine action in human-robot interfaces.
Mechanisms
- Electrodes transduce motor-unit action potentials into measurable voltage.
- Filtering and feature extraction isolate effort and activation onset.
- Pattern classification maps signals to discrete movement intents for Gesture Recognition.
- Calibration adapts decoding to individual physiology and electrode placement.
Applications
- Myoelectric control of robotic prosthetic limbs.
- Intention detection for assistive exoskeletons.
- Rehabilitation monitoring and human-computer interaction.