An Ultra-Sensitive Modular Hybrid EMG-FMG Sensor with Floating Electrodes

Area of Science:

• Biomedical Engineering
• Rehabilitation Engineering
• Sensor Technology

Background:

• Myoelectric prosthetics often rely on single-modal signals, limiting reliability and safety.
• Combining electromyography (EMG) and forcemyography (FMG) offers a practical approach to enhance prosthetic control.
• Existing hybrid EMG-FMG sensors lack integrated and compact designs.

Purpose of the Study:

• To present a novel modular EMG-FMG sensor with an integrated design.
• To evaluate the performance and robustness of the developed hybrid sensor system.
• To assess the accuracy of hand gesture recognition using the EMG-FMG sensor.

Main Methods:

• Development of a modular sensor system with eight identical sensing modules featuring novel floating electrodes for both EMG and FMG.
• System comprises one data acquisition unit and multiple sensor modules.
• Experimental evaluation of sensor performance under standard conditions and with signal interference (two layers of gauze).

Main Results:

• The EMG and FMG signals demonstrated good consistency under standard conditions.
• The FMG signal exhibited superior and more robust performance compared to the EMG signal.
• Average accuracy for recognizing six hand gestures reached 99.07% using combined EMG-FMG signals under standard conditions.
• With two layers of gauze, EMG-only accuracy was 90.9%, while combined EMG-FMG accuracy improved to 99.42%.

Conclusions:

• The novel modular EMG-FMG sensor offers an integrated and compact solution for prosthetic control.
• The hybrid sensor system provides high accuracy and robustness in hand gesture recognition.
• This technology has the potential to significantly improve the reliability and safety of myoelectric prosthetic control.