Modeling of human multi-muscle control system based on voluntary activation and application for myo-electric upper limb prosthetics

2018 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 17K17724
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Intelligent mechanics/Mechanical systems; Rehabilitation science/Welfare engineering
• Research Institution: The University of Electro-Communications
• Principal Investigator: Togo Shunta 電気通信大学, 大学院情報理工学研究科, 助教 (30751523)
• Research Collaborator: Imamizu Hiroshi ; Yokoi Hiroshi ; Jiang Yinlai
• Project Period (FY): 2017-04-01 – 2019-03-31
• Keywords: 筋シナジー / EMG / 随意運動 / 肩義手 / ロボットアーム / 人間機械融合系 / シナジー制御 / 人間化ロボティクス

Outline of Final Research Achievements

In this study, we aimed to model a mechanism of voluntary control of human multi-muscle, and apply it for controlling EMG shoulder disarticulation prosthesis. First, a notion of voluntary control was introduced to the framework of muscle synergy analysis. Then, our experiments demonstrated that voluntarily activatable muscle synergies could be extracted by using an appropriate index. It was also suggested that the muscle synergy is not a minimum unit of voluntary muscle control. Moreover, we applied the notion of the synergy freezing degrees of freedom to the EMG shoulder disarticulation prosthesis system so as to control its robot-arm movements by low degrees of freedom input. As a result, both-shoulder amputee user could use our developed EMG shoulder disarticulation prosthesis to pick an object and place on it. Above results showed the usability of our proposed notion “humanize-robotics.”

Free Research Field

人間化ロボティクス

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

本研究では，筋シナジー解析において抽出する因子の数によって随意活性化可能かどうかが変わることを明らかにし，抽出の際にVAF指標を使うと随意活性化可能である筋シナジーを抽出しやすくなることを明らかにした点に学術的意義がある．また，随意活性化不可能な筋シナジー因子を抽出することがあることを実験的に示し，筋シナジー解析において随意制御性を考慮する重要性を示した．さらに，自由度を削減するシナジーの概念を導入することで，必要最低限の物体の把持移動動作を行うことの出来る，筋電肩義手システムの開発に成功し，実際の両肩離断者が物体の把持移動動作に使用できることを示した点に社会的意義がある．