Abstract:A preliminary study to assess the sensitivity of newly developed EMG-based indices for the analysis of the lower limb in daily activities

The study presented here will be conducted as part of the STEPbySTEP project, which is founded within Eurobench, a H2020 project that aims at creating the first benchmarking framework for robotic systems in Europe. STEPbySTEP aims at developing a modular and sensorized reconfigurable staircase testbed and new metrics, based on electromyographic signals (EMG) and ground reaction forces, for the benchmarking of lower-limb exoskeletons in stair climbing. This paper deals with the EMG metrics only, two indices which will be used to: i) quantifying the amount of activity, and ii) quantifying cocontractions between agonist and antagonist muscles. Aim of the work is to assess their sensitivity to clustering different tasks. The paper is structured as follows: Section II presents the STEPbySTEP project, Section III provides a description of the EMG indices, Section IV is on the tests to assess the sensitivity of the indices, Section V reports on the discussion on the expected results.