Grasp Behavior Analysis Using Muscle and Postural Hand Synergies for Smartphones

Abstract

Smartphones are currently among the most common handheld devices. Previous studies on such handheld touchscreen devices focused on thumb operations or reach zones by measuring individual muscle or joint angles. However, they were limited to thumb operations and did not consider grasping. In this study, we investigated the grasp types of touchscreen devices and other objects included in an existing grasp taxonomy. To this end, principal component analysis and latent profile analysis clustering were used for extracting and grouping muscle and postural synergies. Fourteen healthy subjects performed up to 15 hand grasps, including that with a smartphone. Electromyography (EMG) data were measured on six muscles in the forearm and the hand, and joint angles were measured for 22 joints in the hand. The first two muscle synergies from the EMG data and the first three postural synergies from the kinematic data were found to account for over 60% of the overall grasping. In terms of the synergies, the grasp for handheld touchscreen devices showed unique characteristics in terms of muscle and postural synergies compared to other objects. The obtained results may aid in understanding of grasping behaviors for handheld touchscreen devices in various applications.