The control of prostheses and their complexities is one of the greatest challenges limiting wide amputees’ use of upper limb prostheses. The main challenges include the difficulty of extracting signals for controlling the prostheses, limited number of degrees of freedom (DoF), and cost-prohibitive for complex controlling systems. In this study, a real-time hybrid control system, based on electromyography (EMG) and voice commands (VC) is designed to render the prosthesis more dexterous with the ability to accomplish amputee’s daily activities proficiently. The voice and EMG systems were combined in three proposed hybrid strategies, each strategy had different number of movements depending on the combination protocol between voice and EMG control systems. Furthermore, the designed control system might serve a large number of amputees with different amputation levels, and since it has a reasonable cost and be easy to use. The performance of the proposed control system, based on hybrid strategies, was tested by intact-limbed and amputee participants for controlling the HANDi hand. The results showed that the proposed hybrid control system was robust, feasible, with an accuracy of 94%, 98%, and 99% for Strategies 1, 2, and 3, respectively. It was possible to specify the grip force applied to the prosthetic hand within three gripping forces. The amputees participated in this study preferred combination Strategy 3 where the voice and EMG are working concurrently, with an accuracy of 99%.
Electromyogram (EMG)-based Pattern Recognition (PR) systems for upper-limb prosthesis control provide promising ways to enable an intuitive control of the prostheses with multiple degrees of freedom and fast reaction times. However, the lack of robustness of the PR systems may limit their usability. In this paper, a novel adaptive time windowing framework is proposed to enhance the performance of the PR systems by focusing on their windowing and classification steps. The proposed framework estimates the output probabilities of each class and outputs a movement only if a decision with a probability above a certain threshold is achieved. Otherwise (i.e., all probability values are below the threshold), the window size of the EMG signa
... Show MoreEmotion recognition has important applications in human-computer interaction. Various sources such as facial expressions and speech have been considered for interpreting human emotions. The aim of this paper is to develop an emotion recognition system from facial expressions and speech using a hybrid of machine-learning algorithms in order to enhance the overall performance of human computer communication. For facial emotion recognition, a deep convolutional neural network is used for feature extraction and classification, whereas for speech emotion recognition, the zero-crossing rate, mean, standard deviation and mel frequency cepstral coefficient features are extracted. The extracted features are then fed to a random forest classifier. In
... Show MoreRecording an Electromyogram (EMG) signal is essential for diagnostic procedures like muscle health assessment and motor neurons control. The EMG signals have been used as a source of control for powered prosthetics to support people to accomplish their activities of daily living (ADLs). This work deals with studying different types of hand grips and finding their relationship with EMG activity. Five subjects carried out four functional movements (fine pinch, tripod grip and grip with the middle and thumb finger, as well as the power grip). Hand dynamometer has been used to record the EMG activity from three muscles namely; Flexor Carpi Radialis (FCR), Flexor Digitorum Superficialis (FDS), and Abductor Pollicis Brevis (ABP) with different
... Show MoreAudio-visual detection and recognition system is thought to become the most promising methods for many applications includes surveillance, speech recognition, eavesdropping devices, intelligence operations, etc. In the recent field of human recognition, the majority of the research be- coming performed presently is focused on the reidentification of various body images taken by several cameras or its focuses on recognized audio-only. However, in some cases these traditional methods can- not be useful when used alone such as in indoor surveillance systems, that are installed close to the ceiling and capture images right from above in a downwards direction and in some cases people don't look straight the cameras or it cannot be added in some
... Show MoreRecently, biometric technologies are used widely due to their improved security that decreases cases of deception and theft. The biometric technologies use physical features and characters in the identification of individuals. The most common biometric technologies are: Iris, voice, fingerprint, handwriting and hand print. In this paper, two biometric recognition technologies are analyzed and compared, which are the iris and sound recognition techniques. The iris recognition technique recognizes persons by analyzing the main patterns in the iris structure, while the sound recognition technique identifies individuals depending on their unique voice characteristics or as called voice print. The comparison results show that the resul
... Show MoreHand gestures are currently considered one of the most accurate ways to communicate in many applications, such as sign language, controlling robots, the virtual world, smart homes, and the field of video games. Several techniques are used to detect and classify hand gestures, for instance using gloves that contain several sensors or depending on computer vision. In this work, computer vision is utilized instead of using gloves to control the robot's movement. That is because gloves need complicated electrical connections that limit user mobility, sensors may be costly to replace, and gloves can spread skin illnesses between users. Based on computer vision, the MediaPipe (MP) method is used. This method is a modern method that is discover
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