Autoencoder-based myoelectric controller for prosthetic hands

In the past, linear dimensionality-reduction techniques, such as Principal Component Analysis, have been used to simplify the myoelectric control of high-dimensional prosthetic hands. Nonetheless, their nonlinear counterparts, such as Autoencoders, have been shown to be more effective at compressing and reconstructing complex hand kinematics data. As a result, they have a potential of being a more accurate tool for prosthetic hand control. Here, we present a novel Autoencoder-based controller, in which the user is able to control a high-dimensional (17D) virtual hand via a low-dimensional (2D) space. We assess the efficacy of the controller via a validation experiment with four unimpaired participants. All the participants were able to significantly decrease the time it took for them to match a target gesture with a virtual hand to an average of $$ and three out of four participants significantly improved path efficiency. Our results suggest that the Autoencoder-based controller has the potential to be used to manipulate high-dimensional hand systems via a myoelectric interface with a higher accuracy than PCA; however, more exploration needs to be done on the most effective ways of learning such a controller.