Development of Surface Myoelectric Sensor for Myoelectric Hand Prosthesis

This paper proposes a compact-sized surface myoelectric sensor for myoelectric hand prosthesis. To fit the surface myoelectric sensor in the socket of the myoelectric hand prosthesis, the sensor should be a compact size. The surface myoelectric sensor is composed of a skin interface and a single processing circuit that are mounted on a single package. Since the skin interface has one reference and two input electrodes, and the reference electrode is located in middle of two input electrodes, we propose two types of sensors with the circle- and bar-shaped reference electrode, but all input electrodes are the bar-shaped. The metal material used for the electrodes is the stainless steel (SUS440) that endures sweat and wet conditions. Considering conduction velocity and median frequency of the myoelectric signal, we select the inter-electrode distance (IED) between two input electrodes as 18mm, 20mm, and 22 mm. The signal processing circuit consists of a differential amplifier with band pass filter, a band rejection filter for rejecting 60Hz power-line noise, amplifiers, and a mean absolute value circuit. We evaluate the proposed sensor from the output characteristics according to the IED and the shape of the reference electrode. From the experimental results we show the surface myoelectric sensor with the 18mm IED and the bar-shaped reference electrode is suitable for the myoelectric hand prosthesis.