Smart Wearable Wristband for EMG based Gesture Recognition Powered by Solar Energy Harvester

With the recent improvement of flexible electronics, wearable systems are becoming more and more unobtrusive and comfortable, pervading fitness and health-care applications. Wearable devices allow non-invasive monitoring of vital signs and physiological parameters, enabling advanced Human Machine Interaction (HMI) as well. On the other hand, battery lifetime remains a challenge especially when they are equipped with bio-medical sensors and not used as simple data logger. In this paper, we present a flexible wristband for EMG gesture recognition, designed on a flexible Printed Circuit Board (PCB) strip and powered by a small form-factor flexible solar energy panel. The proposed wristband executes a Support Vector Machine (SVM) algorithm reaching 94.02 % accuracy in recognition of 5 hand gestures. The system targets healthcare and HMI applications, and can be used to monitor patients during rehabilitation from stroke and neural traumas as well as to enable a simple gesture control interface (e.g. for smart-watches). Experimental results show the accuracy achieved by the algorithm and the lifetime of the device. By virtue of the low power consumption of the proposed solution and the on-board processing that limits the radio activity, the wristband achieves more than 500 hours with a single 200 mAh battery, and perpetual work with a small-form factor flexible solar panel.