Integrated neuromuscular fatigue analysis system for soldiers' load carriage trial using DWT

Abstract

This research work addresses neuromuscular fatigue of soldiers using wearable sensors during load carriage trial. Ten healthy male soldiers participated in the experiment. EMG was recorded bilaterally from selected lower extremity muscles and EEG was recorded on the frontal cortex of the brain. Each subject was asked to run and/or march on the treadmill with and without load at 6.4 kmh−1 with inclination increased at every five minutes, until volitional exhaustion was reached. Feature extraction was performed using discrete wavelet transform on both signals. Results demonstrated significant changes in power levels at lower and middle frequency bands for EMG in most muscles during both unloaded and loaded conditions. However for EEG signals, significant changes of power distribution were observed at the frontal cortex during unloaded conditions only. Furthermore, through data visualisation, fatigue was detected at the muscle level first, before enforcing to send signals to the brain for decision making in order to stop the exercise.