Logo image
Modulation of Impedance and Muscle Activation of the Upper Limb Joints while Simultaneously Controlling Manual-grasping and Walking
Conference proceeding   Open access

Modulation of Impedance and Muscle Activation of the Upper Limb Joints while Simultaneously Controlling Manual-grasping and Walking

Joseph Mizrahi, Navit Roth and Rahamim Seliktar
PROCEEDINGS OF THE 10TH INTERNATIONAL JOINT CONFERENCE ON BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING SYSTEMS AND TECHNOLOGIES, VOL 1: BIODEVICES, v 2017-, pp 194-199
01 Jan 2017
url
https://doi.org/10.5220/0006239101940199View
Published, Version of Record (VoR) Open

Abstract

Engineering Engineering, Biomedical Science & Technology Technology
The design of spring-based artificial and robotic arm joints presents a challenge in problems of transportation of manually-held objects during walking. For maintaining stability of these objects, stiffness and damping of the arm joints have to be adjusted by continuously tuning muscle activation. This necessitates knowledge about the mechanisms by which stiffness and damping (mechanical impedance) are being modulated in walking movement. The paradigm employed in this study consisted of modeling the impedance adjustments from input data obtained in simultaneously controlled grasping and walking experiments. While walking on a treadmill, tested subjects held a cup filled with liquid and were asked to aim at minimizing liquid spillage. Monitoring liquid spillage served to quantify stability of the hand as the end-effector of the upper limb. Kinematic data were obtained for the shoulder, elbow and wrist joints. Accelerometer data were obtained for the wrist and for the knee. Electro-myography (EMG) data were collected for the wrist flexor and extensor muscles. Based on the measured data, regressive functions were used to express stiffness and damping as a function of angle and angular velocity. The joints of the upper limb were thereafter successively constrained to study the effect of joint immobilization on joint impedance and muscle activation. The obtained results indicate the nonlinearity of the joint impedances as required in tasks of manual grasping of objects during locomotion, with and without joint constraints.

Metrics

15 Record Views

Details

InCites Highlights

Data related to this publication, from InCites Benchmarking & Analytics tool:

Collaboration types
Domestic collaboration
International collaboration
Web of Science research areas
Engineering, Biomedical
Logo image