EMG based prosthetic leg for above-knee amputee Nikhil Sawake, Santosh Gupta, Ashish Ghatge, Nilesh Ugale, Akshay Khatri K. M. Bhurchandi Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology, Nagpur South Ambazari Road, Nagpur-440010, Maharashtra, India nikhilsawake07@gmail.com Abstract— The work presented in this paper is the first step in development of a prosthetic leg based on EMG signals for above knee amputees. The surface EMG signals picked up from the calf muscles of healthy leg during the muscle activity are interfaced with a microcontroller using EMG acquisition system. These signals are processed, analysed and used to actuate the knee joint of the prosthetic leg. During the course of the present work, it was possible to control the rotation of a motor of prosthetic knee joint using EMG signals from healthy leg. The complete designed prosthesis will allow users to walk with a better gait. Keywords—EMG; prosthetic; rehabilitation, biosignals I. INTRODUCTION The human history has been accompanied by accidental trauma, war and congenital anomalies. Consequently, amputation and deformity have been dealt with one way or another throughout the ages. Our motivation behind this project is the fact that in India, there are nearly 80 lakh people living with limb loss and around 6 lakh people require prosthetic leg every year. Around 70 percent of these are from rural areas. Being engineers, it is our responsibility to develop the technology that can improve the life of disabled people. Our project aims to provide prostheses for above-knee amputees in which the important part is to acquire EMG signals from the calf muscles of healthy leg and analyze them to provide the control signals to actuate the knee joint of the prosthetic leg using a microcontroller. We intend to design a prosthetic leg which is inexpensive, water resistant and easy to fit. A. Technical Background The traditional prosthetic legs which are available are designed mainly for below-knee amputees. Also the knee joints are not automatically actuated in case of prosthetic legs for above-knee amputees. Most of the prosthetics available today are passive, which means people with those devices have to use their intact limb to pull the prosthetics behind them [4]. And the prosthetics that do have motors are either controlled by a remote or require the patient to perform exaggerated movements (like kicking their leg very far back). Such passive prosthetic legs tend to move out of sync with its user’s movements. Also the traditional prosthetic legs are quite heavy and expensive enough that the people from rural areas cannot afford them. Researchers have been implementing microcontrollers in prosthetic knees to enhance the basic mechanical design [2][3]. We have attempted to develop a system that integrates the movement of the prosthesis with the movement of the user which is substantially more important. B. Proposed Solution In order to create the natural movement of the leg, it is essential to move it in synchronization with the normal healthy leg of the amputee. The idea behind our proposed solution consists of acquiring EMG signals from calf muscles of the healthy leg, analyzing these signals and actuating the prosthetic leg according to the acquired EMG signals. The top level block diagram is shown in Figure 1. Figure 1: Top level block diagram We attempted to develop a prosthetic leg system which is more robust, cost effective and easy to use than the traditional ones. Unlike other traditional prosthetics, we wanted the