sEMG-Based Hand Posture Recognition and Visual Feedback Training for the Forearm Amputee

sEMG-based gesture recognition is useful for human-computer interactions, especially for technology supporting rehabilitation training and the control of electric prostheses. However, high variability in the sEMG signals of untrained users degrades the performance of gesture recognition algorithms. In this study, the hand posture recognition algorithm and radar plot-based visual feedback training were developed using multichannel sEMG sensors. Ten healthy adults and one bilateral forearm amputee participated by repeating twelve hand postures ten times. The visual feedback training was performed for two days and five days in healthy adults and a forearm amputee, respectively. Artificial neural network classifiers were trained with two types of feature vectors: a single feature vector and a combination of feature vectors. The classification accuracy of the forearm amputee increased significantly after three days of hand posture training. These results indicate that the visual feedback training efficiently improved the performance of sEMG-based hand posture recognition by reducing variability in the sEMG signal. Furthermore, a bilateral forearm amputee was able to participate in the rehabilitation training by using a radar plot, and the radar plot-based visual feedback training would help the amputees to control various electric prostheses.