Sensing Muscle Activities with Body-Worn Sensors

We demonstrate that simple, unobtrusive sensors attached to the lower arm can be used to capture muscle activations during specific hand and arm activities such as grasping. Specifically, we investigate the use of force sensitive resistors and fabric stretch sensors, that can both be easily integrated into clothing. We use the above sensors to detect the contractions of arm muscles. We present and compare the signals that both sensors produce for a set of typical hand actions. We finally argue that they can provide important information for activity recognition.