Myoelectric Control

The use of electromyographic (EMG) signals from voluntary muscle contractions as control inputs for external devices, most commonly powered upper-limb prostheses but also exoskeletons, wheelchairs, and general computer input. Traditional myoelectric control uses direct mappings — for example, activating the wrist flexor to drive one motor axis and the extensor to drive the opposite — while modern pattern-recognition approaches train machine-learning classifiers on multi-channel EMG to distinguish many more gestures. Myoelectric control is the clinical foundation on which muscle-computer interfaces are built, and remains the dominant paradigm for users of advanced upper-limb prosthetics.