Gesture Classification in Electromyography Signals for Real-Time Prosthetic Hand Control Using a Convolutional Neural Network-Enhanced Channel Attention Model

Accurate and real-time gesture recognition is required for the autonomous operation of prosthetic hand devices. This study employs a convolutional neural network-enhanced channel attention (CNN-ECA) model to provide a unique approach for surface electromyography (sEMG) gesture recognition. The introduction of the ECA module improves the model’s capacity to extract features and focus on critical information in the sEMG data, thus simultaneously equipping the sEMG-controlled prosthetic hand systems with the characteristics of accurate gesture detection and real-time control. Furthermore, we suggest a preprocessing strategy for extracting envelope signals that incorporates Butterworth low-pass filtering and the fast Hilbert transform (FHT), which can successfully reduce noise interference and capture essential physiological information. Finally, the majority voting window technique is adopted to enhance the prediction results, further improving the accuracy and stability of the model. Overall, our multi-layered convolutional neural network model, in conjunction with envelope signal extraction and attention mechanisms, offers a promising and innovative approach for real-time control systems in prosthetic hands, allowing for precise fine motor actions.