So today I did it!! (with some help from a few awesome team members! Thanks Eric, Larry & Tommy!)
I took a Biorobotics class at RIT as part of my MSEE degree in Robotic Intelligence, for the class project we had to control an LED or some sort of actuator using a biological signal. So here is what I did...
Using three EMG signals (the electrical pulses given off when you tense a muscle) from the human arm, we were able to control three aspects of our robot's arm movement.
1. The forearm (making a tight fist), controlled the rotation of our manipulator. It only goes in one direction currently, but when you make a fist it starts the manipulator movement, and when you make a fist the second time it stops the movement. Sounds simple... but it was a lot more work than we expected!!
2. The bicep (curling the bicep tightly), activated the arm movement in an upward direction. If the bicep was curled again, it would stop the movement.
3. The tricep (straightening the arm), activated the downward movement of the arm. If the tricep was tightened again, it would stop the movement.
We got some great video of the manipulator on Larry's camera, and I will post it as soon as I can. That part worked beautifully. We are still working on getting the arm to raise and lower reliably, because on my arm I had trouble firing my bicep without my tricep.
I will be posting the paper once I have actually completed it and got it working, but if anyone has any questions, I'd be happy to answer
Just wanted to celebrate a little since it was quite the process/system!