EMAHA-DB1

Surface EMG (sEMG) signals collected during activities of daily life (ADL) provide better insights toward understanding neuromuscular disorders, persons with limb disabilities, aging adults and neuromotor deficits. Hand movement and control mechanism analysis may improve the design of prosthetic devices, realistic biomechanical hands, and rehabilitation therapy. We present a sEMG signal database corresponding to the Indian population named “ElectroMyography Analysis of Hand Activities - DataBase -1 (EMAHA-DB1).”  The institutional ethics committee of Indian Institute of Information Technology Sri City (No. IIITS/EC/2022/01) approved the proposed data collection protocol developed in accordance with the declaration of Helsinki and the “National Ethical Guidelines for Biomedical and Health Research involving human participants of India.  Twenty-five healthy subjects with no history of upper limb pathology, including 22 males and 3 females, participated in the sEMG data collection process. The average age is 28 years. Before the first session of activities, each of the participants gave informed consent and the data collection process is completely non-invasive.Each of the hand muscle activity is recorded with a 5-channel Noraxon Ultium wireless sEMG sensor setup. Five self-adhesive Ag/AgCL dual electrodes were placed at the center of the five most representative muscle sites of the right arm.  At the beginning of each session, the participant's hands are cleaned with an alcohol based wet wipe. Each subject is instructed to sit comfortably with one elbow resting on a table and an arm fixed at right angle compared to the forearm. Prior to each session, the subject is acquainted with the experiment protocol through a video demonstration of the proposed activities. The total duration of each session is up-to one hour per subject depending on adaptability. Each activity is performed for a maximum duration of 10s and is repeated 10 times. There is a rest period of 5s between each of the repetitions and a 30s gap between the sessions of different activities. Each of the activities consists of two phases: (1) an action and (2) rest. However, some of the activities included an extra release phase. During the action phase, the subject performs the corresponding activity; during the release phase, the subject transitions from the action state to rest  state; and during the rest phase, the subject completely relaxes each of his/her muscles.