EMG Electronics and Interface

Three years ago I ran a successful project with two students who built an Electromyography (EMG) interface. Those students designed the electronics that could measure muscle activity and displayed the resulting signals on an oscilloscope.

This coming year I'd like to kick things up a notch and do something interesting with the signals.

The ideal team will be composed of (in no particular order):

- a coding genius;
- an electronics wizard;
- an interfacing geek;
- a signal-processing guru.

Last year three students approached me over the summer and wanted me to supervise them. I told them that they better get a computer geek on the team, and they out-sourced the job to a student from Systems. This worked out extremely well for all the students. If you can arrange a team beforehand that you know you can work with for an intense six or seven months, that is the best situation.

In a nutshell, here is the project as it is in my head right now (this may change a lot over the first few team meetings):

An EMG pick-up will be interfaced to a human muscle on one side and an electrical sensing, filtering, and amplification circuit on the other side. The pick-up may be designed by the team, or perhaps it will be off-the-shelf. All the electronics will be designed from scratch in-house. The processed signal will be converted from analog form to digital form. The digital signal will be further processed and used to control "something". A user interface will be used to make the entire apparatus a closed-loop system.

The "something" to be controlled could be anything. I am dreaming about a few applications:

- posture monitoring (for preventing forward head position, for example);
- body building (for targeting selected muscle groups);
- video game controller;
- robotic arm controller;
- controller for amputee limb replacement;
- fatigue monitor (for example, for long distance truckers);
- stroke rehabilitation (for retraining muscle use);
- physiotherapy;
- calorie and activity tracker.

You might want to watch the video below to get an impression of the type of application that is possible (the video is from Microsoft).




Here's another video showing more of a an example hardware set-up.





Students usually have a few concerns about their project. They want to know (i) is it feasible in the time available? (ii) will it get me a job? (iii) will it lead to a MASc?

My answers:

(i) Sure, but you have to put in the time. Start from the first week and plug at it.
(ii) Who knows? The project will give excellent experience in the areas of low-noise electronic design, analog signal processing, digital signal processing, embedded programming, computer control, and human physiology.
(iii) I've taken many students from their 4th year project into a MASc. :)

Ideas for 2011-2012 Projects

Well, the 2010-2011 project was a success. The team built a fully functional ECG that interfaced with a microcontroller and an Android phone. The project resulted in a device that measured a user's heart rate and then chose music with a desirable tempo to cause heart rate synchronization for purposes of cardio exercise.

Right now I am imagining some projects for the coming year. Check back here next week and I will have something written up. Maybe even earlier :).