Effects of Sensor Resolution and Localization Rate on the Performance of a Myokinetic Control Interface

Magnetic tracking systems have been widely investigated in biomedical engineering due to the transparency of the human body to static magnetic fields. We recently proposed a novel human-machine interface for prosthetic application, namely the myokinetic interface. This controls multi-articulated prostheses by tracking magnets implanted in the residual muscles of individuals with amputation. Previous studies in this area focused solely on the choice and tuning of the localization algorithm. Here, we addressed the role of the intrinsic properties of the sensors, by analysing their effects on the tracking accuracy and on the computation time of the localization algorithm, through experimentally-verified computer simulations. We observed that the tracking accuracy is primarily affected by the localization rate, which is directly related to the sampling frequency of the sensors, and less significantly affected by the sensor resolution. The computation time, instead, proved positively correlated to the number of MMs, and negatively correlated with the localization rate. Our results may contribute to the development of novel human-machine interfaces for prosthetic limbs and could be extended to a broad range of applications involving magnetic tracking.