Estimation of joint force/torque based on EMG signals

Dislocation of an artificial hip joint is one of the most serious problems for Total Hip Arthroplasty (THA). In order to analyze the phenomenon of the artificial hip joint dislocation, a hip joint simulator has been developed. Although the hip joint motion and the hip joint contact force (the resultant muscle force around muscles of hip joint and the floor reaction force) during the daily life motion must be realized by the simulator, the resultant muscle force around hip joint can not be prepared easily. In this paper, a method to estimate the resultant muscle force around hip joint based on EMG (electromyogram) signals is proposed. Since the proposed estimation method requires only the measurement of EMG signals, the resultant muscle force can be estimated easily. The effectiveness of the proposed estimation method was evaluated by performing the experiments.