Laboratory of Informatics of Grenoble Équipe Ingénierie de l'Interaction Humain-Machine

Équipe Ingénierie de l'Interaction
Humain-Machine

A Feasibility Study on the Use of Anthropometric Variables to Make Muscle-Computer Interface More Practical

In International Scientific Journal Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence 26. pages 1681-1688. 2013.

Angkoon Phinyomark, Franck Quaine, Sylvie Charbonnier, Christine Serviere, Franck Tarpin-Bernard, Yann Laurillau

IF 1.84

Abstract

High classification accuracy has been achieved for muscle–computer interfaces (MCIs) based on surface electromyography (EMG) recognition in many recent works with an increasing number of discrimi- nated movements. However, there are many limitations to use these interfaces in the real-world contexts. One of the major problems is compatibility. Designing and training the classification EMG system for a particular individual user is needed in order to reach high accuracy. If the system can calibrate itself automatically/semi-automatically, the development of standard interfaces that are compatible with almost any user could be possible. Twelve anthropometric variables, a measurement of body dimensions, have been proposed and used to calibrate the system in two different ways: a weighting factor for a classifier and a normalizing value for EMG features. The experimental results showed that a number of relationships between anthropometric variables and EMG time-domain features from upper-limb muscles and movements are statistically strong and significant. In this paper, the feasibility to use anthropometric variables to calibrate the EMG classification system is shown obviously and the proposed calibration technique is suggested to further improve the robustness and practical use of MCIs based on EMG pattern recognition.