Preliminary Design of a EMG Wearable Interface for the Actuation of Soft Pneumatic Artificial Muscles

This paper presents the use of surface electromyographic (sEMG) signals for the actuation of soft pneumatic artificial muscles. The idea behind this paper is finding a relationship between a natural muscle and an artificial muscle, do it through an analysis of the sEMG data. We start from the characterization of a specific soft pneumatic artificial muscle and we relate the root mean square value of the sEMG signal to the contraction of the actuator itself. This work might pave the way for the development of intuitive wearable interfaces for the actuation of soft robots