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Hand grip strength plays a vital role in performing basic daily tasks such as holding an object. These tasks require a lot of effort from the muscles in the forearm. In this paper, we study the relationship between the muscular effort of the flexor muscles in the forearm and hand grip strength. In order to do that, an electronic circuit was constructed to amplify and filter the electromyogram (EMG) signals measured from the Flexor Digitorum Superficialis (FDS) muscle. The EMG signals measured from the FDS are used to study the relationship between muscular effort of the flexor muscles in the forearm and hand grip strength. EMG signals were measured from the subject while he applied minimum, intermediate and maximum hand grips on a hand gripper. The results show that EMG frequency from the FDS increase with increased hand grip strength. This information relating EMG from flexor muscles to hand grip strength is useful to be used in hand rehabilitation devices to estimate suitable resistance to be provided to patients during rehabilitation routines.Each stage of the circuit development is described in detail so that this experiment can be easily reproduced by others.

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Hand grip force, wrist flexion and wrist extension are the result of forearm muscle activity. In certain applications such as controlling the movements of a robotic prosthetic hand, information relating wrist joint angles to forearm muscle activity is useful to be used as part of the control algorithm. In this paper, we study the relationship between the muscular activity of forearm muscles and wrist joint angles/position while hand grip force is varied. In order to do that, an electronic circuit was constructed to amplify and filter the electromyogram (EMG) signals measured from the Flexor Carpi Radialis (FCR), Flexor Digitorum Superficialis (FDS) and Extensor Digitorum Communis (EDC). Neural networks were used to model the relationship between EMG signals and wrist joint angle data at different hand grip strength levels. The performances of the networks were indicated by the corresponding Mean Absolute Error values.