Use of surface electromyography for human amplification using an exoskeleton driven by artificial pneumatic muscles

Robotics for rehabilitation and human amplification is imminent to become part of our daily life. The juxtaposition of human control capability and machine mechanical power offers a promising solution for human assistance and force enhancement. This paper presents an alternative and simple exoskeleton Human-Machine Interface (HMI) for human strength and endurance amplification using a modified version of the Hill-type muscle. Pneumatic Artificial Muscles (PAM) are used as actuators for its high power-to-weight ratio. Genetic Algorithms (GA) approach locally optimizes the control model parameters for the assistive device using muscle surface electromyography (sEMG). The proposed methodology offers advantages such as: reducing the number of electrodes needed to monitor the muscles, decreases the real-time processing effort, which is necessary for embedded implementation and portability, and brings the HMI to a neural level.