Task discrimination from myoelectric activity: a learning scheme for EMG-based interfaces

A learning scheme based on Random Forests is used to discriminate the task to be executed using only myoelectric activity from the upper limb. Three different task features can be discriminated: subspace to move towards, object to be grasped and task to be executed (with the object). The discrimination between the different reach to grasp movements is accomplished with a random forests classifier, which is able to perform efficient features selection, helping us to reduce the number of EMG channels required for task discrimination. The proposed scheme can take advantage of both a classifier and a regressor that cooperate advantageously to split the task space, providing better estimation accuracy with task-specific EMG-based motion decoding models, as reported in [1] and [2]. The whole learning scheme can be used by a series of EMG-based interfaces, that can be found in rehabilitation cases and neural prostheses.