Delsys

Delsys Inc. designs and manufactures wireless surface electromyography (EMG) and biosignal sensor systems and the software used to record and analyze them. Its customers are researchers in movement science, neurophysiology, biomechanics and engineering. The company is based at 23 Strathmore Road, Natick, Massachusetts. It has a European office in Sale, Greater Manchester, UK, and a sales office in Bangalore, India, and sells through distributors in China (Beijing) and Japan (Tokyo).

Delsys was founded in 1993 by Prof. Carlo De Luca, whose research on motor unit decomposition began in 1970 during his PhD at Queen's University in Canada. NASA's Johnson Space Center funded early studies on spacesuit glove design and astronaut balance. By 2000, two Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contracts from Johnson Space Center had helped the company finish its first commercial EMG system, and two more SBIR contracts in the early 2000s supported its wireless sensor development. After Carlo De Luca died in 2016, Gianluca De Luca became president.

The first product, in 1993, was the Bagnoli desktop EMG system, which used parallel-bar electrode technology. The dEMG motor unit decomposition package followed in 2003, and in 2004 the Myomonitor became the company's wireless EMG device for both data logging and live streaming to a PC. The Trigno wireless platform launched in 2008 and combined EMG with accelerometer data. The Trigno Mini sensor arrived in 2011, with snap-lead EMG sensors and load cell and EKG adapters in 2014. The Trigno Avanti sensor, released in 2017, adds a triaxial IMU and on-board processing. In 2019 the company introduced the Trigno Galileo sensor, NeuroMap software and Trigno Quattro multi-head mini sensors. The Trigno Maize high-density EMG sensor and the portable Trigno Lite system came in 2021, Trigno Link in 2023, and in 2024 Trigno Centro became the core of the Trigno platform.

The Trigno Centro base station supports up to 32 wireless sensors per receiver and up to 128 EMG channels, depending on the system. It offers a wireless range of 40 m or more with dual-antenna transmission diversity (nominal range 20 m or more in the user guide), inter-sensor delay under one sample period, six analog inputs at up to 48 kHz plus a 48 kHz microphone input, four BNC trigger ports, EMG sampling selectable from 1,259 to 4,444 samples per second, sensor battery life of 4 to 8 hours and radio in the 2400-2483 MHz band. It is a Class I device under EU MDR 2017/745 and UK MDR 2002.

Other sensors in the range are Trigno Duo, Trigno Snap Lead, analog, goniometer, 4-channel FSR and load cell adapters, and an EKG biofeedback sensor. Software includes Trigno Discover for acquisition and ColorMap muscle-activity visualization, and NeuroMap for motor unit extraction. The Delsys API supports Python, C# and Unity, plus Linux for embedded use such as Raspberry Pi. Delsys positions the API for low-latency streaming in real-time and robotic system integrations, including myoelectric control of robot interactions.

The robotics link is through human-machine interaction: the data is used for myoelectric prosthesis control, exoskeleton-assisted lower-limb rehabilitation research (including work at EPFL) and robot control studies. Other uses include gait and sports biomechanics, speech research and ergonomics. Users include Stanford University, UNC Chapel Hill, University College London, Technical University of Munich, EPFL, KAIST, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Hyundai, DePuy Synthes and Jaguar Land Rover.