Generative Muscle Stimulation: Providing Users with Physical Assistance by Constraining Multimodal-AI with Embodied Knowledge

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Ho, Yun, Nith, Romain, Jiang, Peili, He, Steven, Felalaga, Bruno, Teng, Shan-Yuan, Seeralan, Rhea, Lopes, Pedro
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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_version_ 1866910018242084864
author Ho, Yun
Nith, Romain
Jiang, Peili
He, Steven
Felalaga, Bruno
Teng, Shan-Yuan
Seeralan, Rhea
Lopes, Pedro
author_facet Ho, Yun
Nith, Romain
Jiang, Peili
He, Steven
Felalaga, Bruno
Teng, Shan-Yuan
Seeralan, Rhea
Lopes, Pedro
contents Electrical muscle stimulation (EMS) can support physical-assistance (e.g., shaking a spray-can before painting). However, EMS-assistance is highly-specialized because it is (1) fixed (e.g., one program for shaking spray-cans, another for opening windows); and (2) non-contextual (e.g., a spray-can for cooking dispenses cooking-oil, not paint-shaking it is unnecessary). Instead, we explore a different approach where muscle-stimulation instructions are generated considering the user's context (e.g., pose, location, surroundings). The resulting system is more general-enabling unprecedented EMS interactions (e.g., opening a pill bottle) yet also replicating existing systems (e.g., Affordance++) without task-specific programming. It uses computer-vision/large-language-models to generate EMS-instructions, constraining these to a muscle-stimulation knowledge-base & joint-limits. In our user-study, we found participants successfully completed physical-tasks while guided by generative-EMS, even when EMS-instructions were (purposely) erroneous. Participants understood generated gestures and, even during forced-errors, understood partial-instructions, identified errors, and re-prompted the system. We believe our concept marks a shift toward more general-purpose EMS-interfaces.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2505_10648
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Generative Muscle Stimulation: Providing Users with Physical Assistance by Constraining Multimodal-AI with Embodied Knowledge
Ho, Yun
Nith, Romain
Jiang, Peili
He, Steven
Felalaga, Bruno
Teng, Shan-Yuan
Seeralan, Rhea
Lopes, Pedro
Human-Computer Interaction
Electrical muscle stimulation (EMS) can support physical-assistance (e.g., shaking a spray-can before painting). However, EMS-assistance is highly-specialized because it is (1) fixed (e.g., one program for shaking spray-cans, another for opening windows); and (2) non-contextual (e.g., a spray-can for cooking dispenses cooking-oil, not paint-shaking it is unnecessary). Instead, we explore a different approach where muscle-stimulation instructions are generated considering the user's context (e.g., pose, location, surroundings). The resulting system is more general-enabling unprecedented EMS interactions (e.g., opening a pill bottle) yet also replicating existing systems (e.g., Affordance++) without task-specific programming. It uses computer-vision/large-language-models to generate EMS-instructions, constraining these to a muscle-stimulation knowledge-base & joint-limits. In our user-study, we found participants successfully completed physical-tasks while guided by generative-EMS, even when EMS-instructions were (purposely) erroneous. Participants understood generated gestures and, even during forced-errors, understood partial-instructions, identified errors, and re-prompted the system. We believe our concept marks a shift toward more general-purpose EMS-interfaces.
title Generative Muscle Stimulation: Providing Users with Physical Assistance by Constraining Multimodal-AI with Embodied Knowledge
topic Human-Computer Interaction
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.10648