EMG Based Control of a Robotic Exoskeleton for Shoulder and Elbow Motion Assist

Torehabilitate individuals with impaired upper-limb functions we have developed an exoskeleton robot, ETS-MARSE. In this paper, we proposed and implemented a control strategy using skin surface electromyogram (EMG) signals of subjects to maneuver the developed exoskeleton robot. A nonlinear sliding mode control technique with exponential reaching law was used for this purpose where EMG signals from shoulder and elbow muscles were used as input information to the controller. To evaluate the performance of the proposed control approach experiments were carried out with the healthy subjects. Experimental results indicate that with the proposed control strategy, ETS-MARSE can be effectively maneuvered with the EMG signals both for the single and multi-joint movement assistance.