Artificial Tremor Generation with a Variance Distribution Model of EMG for Prosthetic hand Control

Abstract

The human-like appearance and movements of a myoelectric prosthetic hand are important for upper limb amputees, and many studies have been conducted so far. However, there is no attempt to introduce the involuntary physiological phenomenon, called tremor, into the control of a prosthetic hand. To realize more human-like movements of a prosthetic hand, this study proposes an artificial tremor generation method based on the variance distribution of electromyogram (EMG) signals and introduces it to prosthetic hand control. The proposed artificial tremor generation method can reproduce the action tremor component generated during voluntary movements and the physiological tremor component derived from involuntary mechanical reflexes, respectively. In the experiment, we calculated the power spectrum from the joint angle of the prosthetic hand and compared it with the actual tremor measured from a human body. The results showed that the generated artificial tremor has characteristics similar to the actual human tremor.