Classification of EMG signals with CNN features and voting ensemble classifier

Abstract

Electromyography (EMG) signals are primarily used to control prosthetic hands. Classifying hand gestures efficiently with EMG signals presents numerous challenges. In addition to overcoming these challenges, a successful combination of feature extraction and classification approaches will improve classification accuracy. In the current work, convolutional neural network (CNN) features are used to reduce the redundancy problems associated with time and frequency domain features to improve classification accuracy. The features from the EMG signal are extracted using a CNN and are fed to the ‘k’ nearest neighbor (KNN) classifier with a different number of neighbors ( 1 N N , 3 N N , 5 N N , and 7 N N ) . It results in an ensemble of classifiers that are combined using a hard voting-based classifier. Based on the benchmark Ninapro DB4 database and CapgMyo database, the proposed framework obtained 91.3 % classification accuracy on CapgMyo and 89.5 % on Ninapro DB4.