A 3D Virtual Model of the Knee Driven by EMG Signals
Massimo Sartori, Gaetano Chemello and Enrico Pagello
The 10th Congress of the Italian Association for Artificial Intelligence - Special Track on AI and Robotics
Roma, Italy, September 10-13, 2007
Abstract
A 3D Virtual model of the human lower extremity has been developed for the purpose of examining how the neuromuscular system controls the muscles and generates the desired movement. Within the next future, our aim is to implement intelligent EMG-Driven exoskeletons for knee rehabilitation. The virtual knee, here developed, incorporates the major muscles spanning the knee joint and it is used to estimate the knee joint moment and the corresponding virtual movement which is graphically displayed on a computer screen. We thus developed a graphical interface to the model that allows the user to visualize the skeletal geometry and the movements imparted to it. The purpose of this paper is to describe the design objectives and the implementation of our EMG-Driven virtual knee. We finally compared the virtual knee behavior with the torque performed by the test subject in order to obtain a qualitative validation of our model.