Resumo

GARCIA GARCIA, Jesús; PENALOZA MENDOZA, Guillermo Rey; CASTRO ZENIL, Mario Salvador  e  BECERRA TAPIA, Víctor. Wheelchair automation using electromyographic signals obtained from facial movements. Rev. cienc. tecnol. [online]. 2023, vol.6, n.4, e317.  Epub 25-Jun-2024. ISSN 2594-1925.  https://doi.org/10.37636/recit.v6n4e317.

Tetraplegia is a disease that can be caused by different factors, whether congenital or accidental, limiting people to live without being able to move both the lower and upper extremities. The present work shows the development of a prototype of a wheelchair for quadriplegics controlled by facial movements, this in order to give the patient independence and improve their emotional state by not requiring help to carry out the task of moving the chair. For the implementation of the prototype, an electronic circuit for analog acquisition, amplification and filtering of electromyography (EMG) signals was designed and built, which provides a signal corresponding to the degree of movement of the facial muscles. Subsequently, the signal obtained from the analog base board is digitized and processed with the help of an ATmega328p microcontroller, where additional filtering is performed and the movement made from the signals obtained is determined. This information is sent via Bluetooth connection to a second ATmega328p microcontroller in the physical prototype of the wheelchair. With the information of the action on the wheelchair's microcontroller, the conditioning of the signal is carried out to control the motors that will carry out the corresponding movement. Finally, a mobile application was designed and implemented to control the prototype through buttons, with the idea that a person responsible for the user of the chair can take control if necessary. As a result, the system was implemented on a basic commercial wheelchair, where the motors and a transmission by bands were adapted to generate the movement, this allowed basic control through facial movement and through the mobile application, however, the EMG system requires to be calibrated for different users. As future work, it is proposed to modify the transmission of the prototype and allow an automatic calibration to be applied regardless of the user.

Palavras-chave : Automation; Motor disability; Electromyography; Wheelchair; Tetraplegia.