MyoBuddy: Detecting Barbell Weight Using Electromyogram Sensors

Muscular dystrophy is a group of genetic diseases that cause the loss of muscles and hence weakening the muscle strength. A typical treatment for muscular dystrophy patients is routinely performing weight exercise to slow down the loss in muscles. Thus, we propose a system MyoBuddy to help both physical therapists and patients to keep track of the weights in workout activities based on electromyography (EMG) sensors embedded in Myo armband. In our study, we collect 102 sessions of EMG data from barbell bicep curl exercise with a range of weights from 20 to 70 lbs with a 10-pound increment. Both Support Vector Machine and Random Forest algorithms are explored to classify which weight of barbells are lifted. At the end, we achieve 77.1% classification accuracy on average.