Upper-Limb Muscle Synergy Features in Human-Robot Interaction with Circle-Drawing Movements

The upper-limb rehabilitation robots can be developed as an efficient tool for motor function assessments. Circle-drawing has been used as a specific task for robot-based motor function measurement. The upper-limb movement-related kinematic and kinetic parameters measured by motion and force sensors embedded in the rehabilitation robots have been widely studied. However, the muscle synergies characterized by multiple surface electromyographic (sEMG) signals in upper limbs during human-robot interaction (HRI) with circle-drawing movements are rarely investigated. In this research, the robot-assisted and constrained circle-drawing movements for upper limb were used to increase the consistency of muscle synergy features. Both clockwise and counterclockwise circle-drawing tasks were implemented by all healthy subjects using right hands. The sEMG signals were recorded from six muscles in upper limb, and nonnegative matrix factorization (NMF) analysis was utilized to obtain muscle synergy information. Both synergy pattern and activation coefficient were calculated to represent the spatial and temporal features of muscle synergies, respectively. The results obtained from the experimental study confirmed that high structural similarity of muscle synergies was found among the subjects during HRI with circle-drawing movement by healthy subjects, which indicates healthy people may share a common underlying muscle control mechanism during constrained upper-limb circle-drawing movement. This study indicates the muscle synergy analysis during the HRI with constrained circle-drawing movement could be considered as a task for upper-limb motor function assessment.