EMG controlled low cost prosthetic arm

Electromyography (EMG) signals have been extensively used as a control signal in robotics, rehabilitation and health care. In this paper, cost effective design of prosthetic hand using EMG control is presented. Signal amplification and filtering is the primary step in surface EMG signal processing and application systems. Quality of the acquired EMG signal depends on the amplifiers and filters employed. Single channel continuous EMG signal has been acquired from the users arm for various hand movements. The acquired signal is passed through various stages of filters and amplifiers for amplification and noise reduction. The conditioned analog signal is converted into digital samples. After the signal acquisition process, features are extracted from the acquired signal and the extracted features are reduced to minimize the number of computations. These reduced feature parameters are used to classify the signal for different hand movements. Once the classifier identifies the intended motion, the control signal will be generated and given to the motors in the prosthetic hand to perform the intended movements. Experiments were done to find the efficiency of the developed system and it is found that this system can give basic movements at a very low cost.