For my senior year design project at Cornell, I worked with 2 fellow ECE friends (Srikrishnaa Vadivel '17 and Michael Haidar '17) to create a robotic hand that uses EMG sensors connected to the user's arm. The project was a part of ECE 4760 (Digital Systems Design Using Microcontrollers) - a popular course taught by Bruce Land.

Background

When pressing a finger, muscle contractions in the arm would create electric potential that the EMG sensors would read. Two sensors were placed on the arm - one on the lower left side of the arm and one on the upper right side of the arm (ground was placed on the wrist).

Based on the strength of the EMG reading for each EMG sensor, the microcontroller would determine which finger was pressed and press the corresponding finger on the robotic hand as well.

Results

Final Report

Demo 1

Demo 2

Publications

Hackaday (Dec '16)

Circuit Cellar Magazine (Oct '17)