This past week, I made a lot of progress on the data collection side, and was able to take the hardware system I had been working on the past couple of weeks and record data on it. To start off, I recorded data from a single electrode, as was seen in the previous update, and used that for our first integration test. This way, we were able to confirm that our communication protocols were working smoothly and in real time,…
This week I created obstacles that are appropriate for the game and implemented obstacle collision using Mesh Collider in Unity. I used a planar mesh to check for collision when the character is moving straight into the obstacle. But a different implementation is required when the character tries to move left when the obstacle is there, or when the character jumps onto the obstacle. Next week’s goal is to implement gravity and jump so that the character can jump onto…
This week substantial time was spent working on the written draft of the Project Report. It was important that we made the report as thorough as possible in order to create a good starting point for our final report. This week I began work with the data collected from a single EMG electrode for wrist flexion and extension data. Two sample trials can be seen in the image below. The data collection portion of our project is a little behind…
Early in the week, we collectively worked on putting together our progress report. We received a lot of insightful feedback from our presentation last week, and applied it both to our report and also our project going forward. In response to this feedback, we have more clearly laid out for ourselves specific implementation details. For example, we have defined exactly what data is sent between each module and how, to make integration more clear, which was suggested to us in…
This week I started off finding a way to integrate Arduino and python, such that data could be recorded in one and immediately sent to the other in real time. Using serial communication, I was able to open up a port on my computer and continuously write to it in one program and read from it in another. Once I had communication between the two programs working continuously, I wrote a python script to collect trials of pilot data. You…
This week, I finished assembling the full EMG system in accordance with our established protocol. This included taking apart the builtin grounding mechanism of the MyoWare electrodes to connect them all together, and connecting the 5V/REF wires along with the signal wire. The system is modular and flexible enough to work for participants of all sizes, therefore taller/shorter participants with varying arm lengths will still be able to use it. We have shifted our approach slightly in regards to diversifying…
This week I presented for our team’s design review presentation. A question that came up was what is the difference between game delay and total delay. These names sound quite similar which can be confusing, but the metric for game delay helps to isolate time required for the game to render and react to the mock muscle simulator, while total delay is measured when using actual muscle signals which must go through the classification algorithm. Identifying these metrics and risk…
This week I developed character movement and infinite terrain feature. One of the easiest way to burden the game main thread is to infinitely create roads and terrains as the character moves forward. This eventually take up large unnecessary game memory. We can clear up the issue by deleting the objects that are behind the character. Because I expect many more objects to be created at run time (coins, obstacles, etc) I decided to just move the road that is…
This week the team had a few successes on both the hardware and software sides. On the hardware side, the parts are soldered together we are just about ready to to record data from the EMG hardware system. On the software side, basic functionality of the MyoRun game is implemented and integrated with the Mock Muscle controller. With more game objects and functionalities being implemented, optimizations wherever possible (but not too much premature optimization) is crucial and the Software side…
This week I spent time furthering specifics for the data collection experimental procedure of our project. Additionally, I have been exploring common data processing techniques for classifying EMG data, specifically useful feature extraction techniques such as Wavelet Transform. I will also be presenting during the Design Review Presentation for our team next week, so I have been working on the slides and preparing the presentation. Our project is currently on track and the next step is to collect the EMG…