Expert committee classifier for hand motions recognition from EMG signals

This paper presents the design and implementation of a novel technique for the recognition of four hand motions for real time response (flexion (FL), extension (EX), opening (OP) and closure (CL)) from electromyographic (EMG) signals generated from two forearm muscles: palmaris longus and extensor digitorum. The development of the work had two main stages: the low cost hardware for acquisition and conditioning of the EMG analog signals and the processing system for the identification and classification of the movement performed for real time response; the entire system was integrated in a hardware-software application using MATLAB and processing techniques for the discriminant analysis were performed. Three methods were evaluated for pattern recognition getting 98% recognition rates with the method proposed which had the best performance.