2A2-U06 Quantitative Evaluation of Muscle Fatigue During Wearing Muscle-suit by Frequency Analysis of Surface Electromyogram Used Continuous Wavelet Transform(Welfare Robotics and Mechatronics (3))

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to evaluate quantitative efficiency of power assist device by calculating muscle fatigue quantitatively. In this paper, we propose the efficiency quantitative evaluation method of power assist device by using the continuations wavelet transform of surface electromyogram (SEMG). The proposed method can measure muscle fatigue characteristic by calculated instantaneous median frequency of SEMG. We evaluate Muscle Suit^<[○!R]>R which is a power assist device for waist motion. SEMGs of erector spinae, rectus femoris and biceps femoris muscles of 10 healthy men subjects are measured while subjects take up and down a weight until they cannot continue such motions w/o the power assist device. Only erector spinae muscle fatigue is significant reduced (56%) in case of the power assist device used. The experimental results suggest that the proposed method can evaluate the efficiency of power assist device quantitatively.