A Transformer Framework Informed by Muscle Anatomy and Sequence-to-Sequence Translation for Continuous Joint Kinematics Prediction Using sEMG

The key to achieving assist-as-needed (AAN) control in rehabilitation robots lies in accurately predicting patient motion intentions. This study, for the first time, redefines motion intention prediction from the perspective of sequence-to-sequence translation by analogizing sEMG signals and joint angles to the source language and target language, respectively. The proposed 3DCNN-TF model achieves precise translation of neural control signals into kinematic representations. This model comprises three modules: an sEMG “sentence” generation module that compiles multiple sEMG sliding windows into a “sentence,” a 3DCNN module based on muscle anatomy and electrode placement to extract muscle synergy features from each “word” in the “sentence,” and a Transformer (TF) module that autoregressively generates the next joint angle as the translation result. Experimental results indicate that the 3DCNN-TF model achieves superior overall performance compared to eight baseline models and existing studies in continuously predicting wrist and knee flexion/extension angles across varying speeds. Moreover, the 3DCNN-TF achieves an optimal balance between prediction accuracy and computational efficiency while exhibiting exceptional robustness and generalizability. Specifically, the 3DCNN-TF achieves average nRMSE and R² values of (6.2%/95.5%) and (5.5%/96.2%) on wrist and knee datasets, respectively, with an average training time of less than two minutes. Additionally, the 3DCNN-TF can predict joint angles up to 300 ms in advance without compromising accuracy, which is critical for real-time AAN control in rehabilitation robots.