Recently, there has been a surge of significant interest on application of Deep Learning (DL) models to autonomously perform hand gesture recognition using surface Electromyogram (sEMG) signals. DL models are, however, mainly designed to be applied on sparse sEMG signals. Furthermore, due to their complex structure, typically, we are faced with memory constraints; require large training times and a large number of training samples, and; there is the need to resort to data augmentation and/or transfer learning. In this paper, for the first time (to the best of our knowledge), we investigate and design a Vision Transformer (ViT) based architecture to perform hand gesture recognition from High Density (HD-sEMG) signals. Intuitively speaking, we capitalize on the recent breakthrough role of the transformer architecture in tackling different complex problems together with its potential for employing more input parallelization via its attention mechanism. The proposed Vision Transformer-based Hand Gesture Recognition (ViT-HGR) framework can overcome the aforementioned training time problems and can accurately classify a large number of hand gestures from scratch without any need for data augmentation and/or transfer learning. The efficiency of the proposed ViT-HGR framework is evaluated using a recently-released HD-sEMG dataset consisting of 65 isometric hand gestures. Our experiments with 64-sample (31.25 ms) window size yield average test accuracy of 84.62 +/- 3.07%, where only 78, 210 number of parameters is utilized. The compact structure of the proposed ViT-based ViT-HGR framework (i.e., having significantly reduced number of trainable parameters) shows great potentials for its practical application for prosthetic control.
Concordia University（康考迪亚大学）；New York University（纽约大学）；University of Calgary（卡尔加里大学）
Designing efficient and labor-saving prosthetic hands requires powerful hand gesture recognition algorithms that can achieve high accuracy with limited complexity and latency. In this context, the paper proposes a compact deep learning framework referred to as the CT-HGR, which employs a vision transformer network to conduct hand gesture recognition using highdensity sEMG (HD-sEMG) signals. The attention mechanism in the proposed model identifies similarities among different data segments with a greater capacity for parallel computations and addresses the memory limitation problems while deali…
Hand Gesture Recognition from Doppler Radar Signals Using Echo State Networks
Department of Computer Science, Nagoya Institute of Technology（名古屋技术大学计算机科学系）；International Research Center for Neurointelligence, The University of Tokyo（东京大学神经智能国际研究中心）
Concordia University（康考迪亚大学）；Concordia Institute for Information System Engineering（康考迪亚信息系统工程研究院）；Imperial College London（帝国理工学院）；New York University（纽约大学）
Advances in biosignal signal processing and machine learning, in particular Deep Neural Networks (DNNs), have paved the way for the development of innovative Human-Machine Interfaces for decoding the human intent and controlling artificial limbs. DNN models have shown promising results with respect to other algorithms for decoding muscle electrical activity, especially for recognition of hand gestures. Such data-driven models, however, have been challenged by their need for a large number of trainable parameters and their structural complexity. Here we propose the novel Temporal Convolutions-b…
Deep learning-based Hand Gesture Recognition (HGR) via surface Electromyogram (sEMG) signals has recently shown significant potential for development of advanced myoelectric-controlled prosthesis. Existing deep learning approaches, typically, include only one model as such can hardly maintain acceptable generalization performance in changing scenarios. In this paper, we aim to address this challenge by capitalizing on the recent advances of hybrid models and transformers. In other words, we propose a hybrid framework based on the transformer architecture, which is a relatively new and revoluti…
Concordia University（康考迪亚大学）；Concordia Institute for Information System Engineering（康考迪亚信息系统工程研究所）
Advancements in Biological Signal Processing (BSP) and Machine-Learning (ML) models have paved the path for development of novel immersive Human-Machine Interfaces (HMI). In this context, there has been a surge of significant interest in Hand Gesture Recognition (HGR) utilizing Surface-Electromyogram (sEMG) signals. This is due to its unique potential for decoding wearable data to interpret human intent for immersion in Mixed Reality (MR) environments. To achieve the highest possible accuracy, complicated and heavy-weighted Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) are typically developed, which restricts t…
Online hand gesture recognition (HGR) techniques are essential in augmented reality (AR) applications for enabling natural human-to-computer interaction and communication. In recent years, the consumer market for low-cost AR devices has been rapidly growing, while the technology maturity in this domain is still limited. Those devices are typical of low prices, limited memory, and resource-constrained computational units, which makes online HGR a challenging problem. To tackle this problem, we propose a lightweight and computationally efficient HGR framework, namely LE-HGR, to enable real-time …
University of Bristol（布里斯托大学）；Shahid Beheshti University（沙希德·贝赫什提大学）
We propose a two-stage convolutional neural network (CNN) architecture for robust recognition of hand gestures, called HGR-Net, where the first stage performs accurate semantic segmentation to determine hand regions, and the second stage identifies the gesture. The segmentation stage architecture is based on the combination of fully convolutional residual network and atrous spatial pyramid pooling. Although the segmentation sub-network is trained without depth information, it is particularly robust against challenges such as illumination variations and complex backgrounds. The recognition stag…
Institute of Neuroinformatics, University of Zurich and ETH Zurich（苏黎世大学与苏黎世联邦理工学院神经信息学研究所）
The discrimination of human gestures using wearable solutions is extremely important as a supporting technique for assisted living, healthcare of the elderly and neurorehabilitation. This paper presents a mobile electromyography (EMG) analysis framework to be an auxiliary component in physiotherapy sessions or as a feedback for neuroprosthesis calibration. We implemented a framework that allows the integration of multisensors, EMG and visual information, to perform sensor fusion and to improve the accuracy of hand gesture recognition tasks. In particular, we used an event-based camera adapted …
A Methodological and Structural Review of Hand Gesture Recognition Across Diverse Data Modalities
The University of Aizu（会津大学）；Bangamata Sheikh Fojilatunnesa Mujib Science & Technology University（班加玛塔·谢赫·福吉拉图内萨·穆吉布科技大学）；Pabna University of Science and Technology（巴布纳科技大学）；Sheikh Hasina University（谢赫·哈西娜大学）
Hand gestures recognition (HGR) is one of the main areas of research for the engineers, scientists and bioinformatics. HGR is the natural way of Human Machine interaction and today many researchers in the academia and industry are working on different application to make interactions more easy, natural and convenient without wearing any extra device. HGR can be applied from games control to vision enabled robot control, from virtual reality to smart home systems. In this paper we are discussing work done in the area of hand gesture recognition where focus is on the intelligent approaches inclu…
Within the field of electromyography-based (EMG) gesture recognition, disparities exist between the offline accuracy reported in the literature and the real-time usability of a classifier. This gap mainly stems from two factors: 1) The absence of a controller, making the data collected dissimilar to actual control. 2) The difficulty of including the four main dynamic factors (gesture intensity, limb position, electrode shift, and transient changes in the signal), as including their permutations drastically increases the amount of data to be recorded. Contrarily, online datasets are limited to …
Topology of surface electromyogram signals: hand gesture decoding on Riemannian manifolds
University of California, Davis（加利福尼亚大学戴维斯分校）；Center for Brain and Mind, University of California, Davis（加利福尼亚大学戴维斯分校脑与心智中心）；Department of Neurobiology, Physiology, and Behavior, University of California, Davis（加利福尼亚大学戴维斯分校神经生物学、生理学与行为学系）；Department of Otolaryngology/Head and Neck Surgery, University of California, Davis（加利福尼亚大学戴维斯分校耳鼻喉科/头颈外科）
Concordia University（康考迪亚大学）；Concordia Institute of Information Systems Engineering (CIISE)（康考迪亚信息系统工程研究院）；New York University (NYU)（纽约大学）；UNSW SYDNEY（悉尼新南威尔士大学）
Development of advance surface Electromyogram (sEMG)-based Human-Machine Interface (HMI) systems is of paramount importance to pave the way towards emergence of futuristic Cyber-Physical-Human (CPH) worlds. In this context, the main focus of recent literature was on development of different Deep Neural Network (DNN)-based architectures that perform Hand Gesture Recognition (HGR) at a macroscopic level (i.e., directly from sEMG signals). At the same time, advancements in acquisition of High-Density sEMG signals (HD-sEMG) have resulted in a surge of significant interest on sEMG decomposition tec…
Live Demonstration: Neuromorphic Radar for Gesture Recognition
Department of Electronic Systems Engineering, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India 560012（电子系统工程系，印度科学院，班加罗尔，印度560012）；Department of Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India 560012（电气工程系，印度科学院，班加罗尔，印度560012）
We present an on-device real-time hand gesture recognition (HGR) system, which detects a set of predefined static gestures from a single RGB camera. The system consists of two parts: a hand skeleton tracker and a gesture classifier. We use MediaPipe Hands as the basis of the hand skeleton tracker, improve the keypoint accuracy, and add the estimation of 3D keypoints in a world metric space. We create two different gesture classifiers, one based on heuristics and the other using neural networks (NN).
The University of Electro-Communications（电气通信大学）；Instituto Politecnico Nacional（墨西哥国立理工学院）
In this paper, we introduce a new benchmark dataset named IPN Hand with sufficient size, variety, and real-world elements able to train and evaluate deep neural networks. This dataset contains more than 4,000 gesture samples and 800,000 RGB frames from 50 distinct subjects. We design 13 different static and dynamic gestures focused on interaction with touchless screens. We especially consider the scenario when continuous gestures are performed without transition states, and when subjects perform natural movements with their hands as non-gesture actions. Gestures were collected from about 30 di…
Hand Gesture Recognition (HGR) is of major importance for Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) applications. In this paper, we present a new hand gesture recognition approach called GNG-IEMD. In this approach, first, we use a Growing Neural Gas (GNG) graph to model the image. Then we extract features from this graph. These features are not geometric or pixel-based, so do not depend on scale, rotation, and articulation. The dissimilarity between hand gestures is measured with a novel Improved Earth Mover\textquotesingle s Distance (IEMD) metric. We evaluate the performance of the proposed approach …
Malaviya National Institute of Technology Jaipur（斋浦尔马拉维亚国家理工学院）；olx people（OLX人事）
The HGR is a quite challenging task as its performance is influenced by various aspects such as illumination variations, cluttered backgrounds, spontaneous capture, etc. The conventional CNN networks for HGR are following two stage pipeline to deal with the various challenges: complex signs, illumination variations, complex and cluttered backgrounds. The existing approaches needs expert expertise as well as auxiliary computation at stage 1 to remove the complexities from the input images. Therefore, in this paper, we proposes an novel end-to-end compact CNN framework: fine grained feature atte…
We propose a new metric to measure domain divergence and a new domain adaptation method for time-series classification. The metric belongs to the class of probability distributions-based metrics, is transductive, and does not assume the presence of source data samples. The 2-stage method utilizes an improved autoregressive, RNN-based architecture with deep/non-linear transformation. We assess our metric and the performance of our model in the context of sEMG/EMG-based gesture recognition under inter-session and inter-subject domain shifts.
University of Padova（帕多瓦大学）；National Center of Neurology and Psychiatry（国立精神·神经医疗研究中心）
Internet of Things is rapidly spreading across several fields, including healthcare, posing relevant questions related to communication capabilities, energy efficiency and sensors unobtrusiveness. Particularly, in the context of recognition of gestures, e.g., grasping of different objects, brain and muscular activity could be simultaneously recorded via EEG and EMG, respectively, and analyzed to identify the gesture that is being accomplished, and the quality of its performance. This paper proposes a new algorithm that aims (i) to robustly extract the most relevant features to classify differe…
In this study, the four joint time-frequency (TF) moments; mean, variance, skewness, and kurtosis of TF matrix obtained from Multivariate Synchrosqueezing Transform (MSST) are proposed as features for hand gesture recognition. A publicly available dataset containing surface EMG (sEMG) signals of 40 subjects performing 10 hand gestures, was used. The distinguishing power of the feature variables for the tested gestures was evaluated according to their p values obtained from the Kruskal-Wallis (KW) test. It is concluded that the mean, variance, skewness, and kurtosis of TF matrices can be candid…
Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS)（拉合尔管理科学大学）；Hazara University（哈扎拉大学）；Islamic University（伊斯兰大学）
Electromyography (EMG) signals have been successfully employed for driving prosthetic limbs of a single or double degree of freedom. This principle works by using the amplitude of the EMG signals to decide between one or two simpler movements. This method underperforms as compare to the contemporary advances done at the mechanical, electronics, and robotics end, and it lacks intuition. Recently, research on myoelectric control based on pattern recognition (PR) shows promising results with the aid of machine learning classifiers. Using the approach termed as, EMG-PR, EMG signals are divided int…
Electromyography (EMG) is a way of measuring the bioelectric activities that take place inside the muscles. EMG is usually performed to detect abnormalities within the nerves or muscles of a target area. The recent developments in the field of Machine Learning allow us to use EMG signals to teach machines the complex properties of human movements. Modern machines are capable of detecting numerous human activities and distinguishing among them solely based on the EMG signals produced by those activities. However, success in accomplishing this task mostly depends on the learning technique used b…
A central challenge in building robotic prostheses is the creation of a sensor-based system able to read physiological signals from the lower limb and instruct a robotic hand to perform various tasks. Existing systems typically perform discrete gestures such as pointing or grasping, by employing electromyography (EMG) or ultrasound (US) technologies to analyze muscle states. While estimating finger gestures has been done in the past by detecting prominent gestures, we are interested in detection, or inference, done in the context of fine motions that evolve over time. Examples include motions …
A Powered Prosthetic Hand with Vision System for Enhancing the Anthropopathic Grasp
Shenyang Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院沈阳自动化研究所）；Institutes for Robotics and Intelligent Manufacturing, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院机器人与智能制造研究院）；University of Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院大学）；School of Electronics and Communication Engineering, Sun Yat-sen University（中山大学电子与通信工程学院）；Department of Mechanical and Energy Engineering, Southern University of Science and Technology（南方科技大学机械与能源工程系）
