A bionic hand controlled by hand gesture recognition based on surface EMG signals: A preliminary study

Abstract A bionic hand with fine motor ability could be a favorable option for replacing the human hand when performing various operations. Myoelectric control has been widely used to recognize hand movements in recent years. However, most of the previous studies have focused on whole-hand movements, with only a few investigating subtler motions. The aim of this study was to construct a prototype system for recognizing hand postures with the aim of controlling a bionic hand by analyzing sEMG signals measured at the flexor digitorum superficialis and extensor digitorum muscles. We adopted multiple features commonly used in previous studies—mean absolute value, zero crossing, slope sign change, and waveform length—in the algorithm for extracting hand-posture features, and the k-nearest-neighbors (KNN) algorithm as the classifier to perform hand-posture recognition. The bionic hand was controlled by an Arduino microprocessor, which converted the signals received from the classification process that were fed to the servo motors controlling the bionic fingers. We constructed a two-channel sEMG pattern-recognition system that can identify human hand postures and control a homemade bionic hand to perform corresponding hand postures. The KNN approach was able to recognize four different hand postures with a classification accuracy of 94% in the online experiment by using the channel combination. Moreover, the experimental tests show that the bionic hand could faithfully imitate the hand postures of the human hand. This study has bridged the gap between the features of sEMG signals of fingers and the postures of a bionic hand.