Reconstruction of Surface EMG Signal using IMU data for Upper Limb Actions

TL;DR

This study presents a deep learning method to synthesize surface EMG signals from IMU data, enabling muscle activity detection without direct EMG measurement, which benefits prosthetics and rehabilitation.

Contribution

It introduces a novel deep learning model that accurately predicts muscle activation timing from IMU data, reducing reliance on noisy EMG signals.

Findings

High temporal fidelity in muscle activation prediction

Successful mapping of IMU data to sEMG signals

Potential applications in prosthetics and biofeedback

Abstract

Surface Electromyography (sEMG) provides vital insights into muscle function, but it can be noisy and challenging to acquire. Inertial Measurement Units (IMUs) provide a robust and wearable alternative to motion capture systems. This paper investigates the synthesis of normalized sEMG signals from 6-axis IMU data using a deep learning approach. We collected simultaneous sEMG and IMU data sampled at 1~KHz for various arm movements. A Sliding-Window-Wave-Net model, based on dilated causal convolutions, was trained to map the IMU data to the sEMG signal. The results show that the model successfully predicts the timing and general shape of muscle activations. Although peak amplitudes were often underestimated, the high temporal fidelity demonstrates the feasibility of using this method for muscle intent detection in applications such as prosthetics and rehabilitation biofeedback.