Paper Title
Characterization of Muscle Contraction Force Gradient using Piezoelectricity – Part I

Abstract
The current document is intending to bring some elements on the application of piezoelectricity to a technology treating of muscular contraction analysis. Piezoelectric materials are chosen as sensors because of their attractive properties to produce electricity when they are folded. The topic of this article will be a discussion on the adjustment of patches using such materials to the skin and on the relevance of their results as muscular sensors for prosthetic members or others controlling systems. The system focuses on the skin surface modifications due to muscular contraction, for the study of which an electronic circuit has been developed using a low pass filter and a peak revelator to get an appropriate signal from the piezoelectric patch. Its output being around the millivolt, a non-inverting amplifier intensifies the signal at the end of the circuit. To visualize the output of the patch folded by a patient’s muscle, a display shows the curvature angle of the patch computed by an Arduino Uno. The first experiences have been made on the hand of ten subjects and the results show that after few trials, all the voluntaries could control the output of the system by the curvature angle. Keywords - Sensor, Piezoelectricity, Muscular Contraction