Abstract
With an increase in the number of elderly people in our society, the need for equipments that ensure activities of daily living and that can be used in strength training for reducing the need for nursing care is increasing. In this paper, we propose a method for controlling the level of muscle activation for a particular muscle group without EMG sensors; the force exerted by the tips of the limbs during motion is used to control the level of muscle activation. The method is based on a musculoskeletal model for limbs called functionally different effective muscles of three antagonistic pairs of six muscles in 2D space. Hill's equation is incorporated in the method to consider force-velocity characteristics of muscles. EMG measurement results for two muscles under isokinetic contraction in the lower limbs of a subject show that difference between the achieved activation level and the desired activation level is less than the error of the output force distribution. Moreover, the control method is applied to strength training. A manipulator that can facilitate the isokinetic contraction with more than the desired activation level for a specific muscle group is developed.
