Surface EMG-Based Instantaneous Hand Gesture Recognition Using Convolutional Neural Network with the Transfer Learning Method

In recent years, surface electromyography (sEMG)-based human–computer interaction has been developed to improve the quality of life for people. Gesture recognition based on the instantaneous values of sEMG has the advantages of accurate prediction and low latency. However, the low generalization ability of the hand gesture recognition method limits its application to new subjects and new hand gestures, and brings a heavy training burden. For this reason, based on a convolutional neural network, a transfer learning (TL) strategy for instantaneous gesture recognition is proposed to improve the generalization performance of the target network. CapgMyo and NinaPro DB1 are used to evaluate the validity of our proposed strategy. Compared with the non-transfer learning (non-TL) strategy, our proposed strategy improves the average accuracy of new subject and new gesture recognition by 18.7% and 8.74%, respectively, when up to three repeated gestures are employed. The TL strategy reduces the training time by a factor of three. Experiments verify the transferability of spatial features and the validity of the proposed strategy in improving the recognition accuracy of new subjects and new gestures, and reducing the training burden. The proposed TL strategy provides an effective way of improving the generalization ability of the gesture recognition system.