EMG-Driven Stiffness-Modulating Palpation for Telerehabilitation

2025-06-10

AI Summary

Precise palpation-based assessment of small muscle group biomechanics remains unaddressed in remote rehabilitation. To address this, we propose a surface electromyography (sEMG)-driven dynamic stiffness modulation mechanism and develop HJ-Pal—a lightweight, wearable haptic device. HJ-Pal decodes sEMG signals in real time to regulate fluidic occlusion within a cellular pneumatic structure, thereby translating muscular activation intensity into tunable kinesthetic feedback stiffness. This work establishes the first closed-loop mapping from EMG to haptic stiffness, integrating flexible sensing and actuation within a monolithic architecture. Experimental evaluation demonstrates a stiffness response latency of <120 ms and modulation accuracy of ±15%. In realistic remote rehabilitation scenarios, HJ-Pal significantly improves inter-rater consistency for small muscle functional assessment (ICC = 0.92), overcoming the longstanding technical limitation of lacking quantitative mechanical feedback in remote rehabilitation systems.

Technology Category

• Humans and AI: Interaction Techniques and Devices
• Intelligent Robots: Manipulation
• Machine Learning: Hardware-aware ML

Application Category

• Responsible Web: Machine-in-the-loop, human agency and autonomy
• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: On-Device user modeling, personalization, and recommendation
• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Applied ML and AI for Web-based mobile applications

Abstract

In this work, we introduce HJ-Pal, a lightweight wearable haptic device that leverages EMG-driven honeycomb jamming to render muscle activation as kinesthetic feedback, enabling remote palpation for small muscle assessment in telerehabilitation.

Problem

• Develop EMG-driven wearable for muscle feedback
• Enable remote palpation in telerehabilitation
• Assess small muscles via haptic technology

Innovation

• EMG-driven honeycomb jamming for feedback
• Lightweight wearable haptic device
• Remote palpation for muscle assessment