Construction of arm motion support system using Time - Frequency analysis of EMG signals

The lack of caretakers for senior citizens and physically handicapped persons in our country has now become critical, and has created a great need for caretaker robots. The usual caretaker robots (many of which have switches or joysticks for their interfaces), however, are neither easy to use nor very popular. Haptic devices offer human-machine interfaces enabling more intuitive operation. At this point, a method is being tested that seeks to prevent mistaken responses to the user´s signals by matching motions with EMG signals. Here, this method is applied to the development of an arm-motion support system, much needed for disabled persons. To realize such a system, it is necessary to estimate the user´s intention and assist the arm movement by biomedical signals. In this study, a new analysis approach with time-frequency analysis for EMG signals is proposed and applied to an arm-motion support robot.