A common challenge in Bicep Curls rehabilitation is muscle compensation, where patients adopt alternative movement patterns when the primary muscle group cannot act due to injury or fatigue, significantly decreasing the effectiveness of rehabilitation efforts. The problem is exacerbated by the growing trend toward transitioning from in-clinic to home-based rehabilitation, where constant monitoring and correction by physiotherapists are limited. Developing wearable sensors capable of detecting muscle compensation becomes crucial to address this challenge. This study aims to gain insights into the optimal deployment of wearable sensors through a comprehensive study of muscle compensation in Bicep Curls. We collect upper limb joint kinematics and surface electromyography signals (sEMG) from eight muscles in 12 healthy subjects during standard and fatigue stages. Two muscle synergies are derived from sEMG signals and are analyzed comprehensively along with joint kinematics. Our findings reveal a shift in the relative contribution of forearm muscles to shoulder muscles, accompanied by a significant increase in activation amplitude for both synergies. Additionally, more pronounced movement was observed at the shoulder joint during fatigue. These results suggest focusing on the shoulder muscle activities and joint motions when deploying wearable sensors to effectively detect compensatory movements.

It will be one of NASA's most ambitious missions and, to prove its prowess, the space agency has released footage of it Mars 2020 rover flexing its proverbial muscles - by performing heavyweight bicep curls. In a time-lapse video taken at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, earlier this month, the rover's 7-foot-long (2.1-meter-long) arm handily maneuvers 88 pounds' (40 kilograms') worth of sensor-laden turret as it moves from a deployed to a stowed configuration. This is no mean feat considering it's fitted with five heavy electrical motors and five joints - known as the shoulder azimuth joint, shoulder elevation joint, elbow joint, wrist joint and turret joint. Buff: The rover's 7-foot-long (2.1-meter-long) arm handily maneuvers 88 pounds' (40 kilograms') worth of sensor-laden turret as it moves from a deployed to a stowed configuration The turret itself includes HD cameras, a scanning instrument, X-ray technology and a coring mechanism for digging into the red planet. On Mars, the arm and turret will work together, allowing the rover to work as a human geologist would: by reaching out to interesting geologic features, abrading, analysing and even collecting them for further study. This will be done via the Mars 2020's Sample Caching System, which will collect samples of Martian rock and soil that will be returned to Earth by a future mission.