Nonlinear Neuromuscular Electrical Stimulation Tracking Control of a Human Limb

A high-level objective of neuromuscular electrical stimulation (NMES) is to enable a person to achieve some functional task. Towards this goal, the objective of the current effort is to develop a NMES controller to produce a knee position trajectory that will enable a human shank to track any continuous desired trajectory (or constant setpoint). A nonlinear control method is developed to control the human quadriceps femoris muscle undergoing nonisometric contractions. The developed controller does not require a muscle model and can be proven to yield asymptotic stability for a nonlinear muscle model in the presence of bounded nonlinear disturbances (e.g., spasticity, delays, fatigue). The performance of the controller is demonstrated through a series of closed-loop experiments on human subjects. The experiments illustrate the ability of the controller to enable the leg shank to track single and multiple period trajectories with different periods and ranges of motion, and also track desired step changes with changing loads.