Figure 8.

Effect of assistance from the glove on the activity of the flexor digitorum superficialis (FDS) muscle during a force-tracking task. Two healthy participants were instructed to grasp a dynamometer and following a reference grasping force trajectory, shown on a screen, with and without assistance from the glove. Assistance from the glove was controlled using a handheld joystick, whose position was proportional to the current of the motor. (a) Reference and measured force profiles for both conditions. The dashed line indicates the reference tracking trajectory. The solid lines indicate measured participant force profiles. (b) Examples raw muscular activity of the FDS during the force-tracking tasks from one participant. (c) Root mean square of the FDS activity during the tracking task, averaged over participants, for five different grasping forces, as a percentage of maximum voluntary contraction.