Abstract
Continuous monitoring and analysis of skeletal muscles’ contractility have been extensively associated with sensing and bio-signal processing technologies and increasingly demanded by applications in the fields of sports, control and interaction, rehabilitation and medical care. While most existing approaches are confined in isometric studies in clinics or laboratories, researchers have been devoted in recent years towards continuous monitoring and analysis of skeletal muscles’ contractility in motion. This paper aims to provide an overview of current status of non-invasive sensing technologies for monitoring skeletal muscles’ activation, up-to-date findings on observing and characterizing the force-length and force-velocity relationships, and various existing activation-contractility models. In addition, this paper evaluates various sensing technologies for muscle activation, indicates challenges for bio-mechanical modeling on activation-contractility, and makes recommendations on future developments in continuous monitoring and analysis of skeletal muscles’ contractility in-motion.