EMG-Based Dynamic Hand Gesture Recognition Using Edge AI for Human–Robot Interaction

Abstract

Recently, human–robot interaction technology has been considered as a key solution for smart factories. Surface electromyography signals obtained from hand gestures are often used to enable users to control robots through hand gestures. In this paper, we propose a dynamic hand-gesture-based industrial robot control system using the edge AI platform. The proposed system can perform both robot operating-system-based control and edge AI control through an embedded board without requiring an external personal computer. Systems on a mobile edge AI platform must be lightweight, robust, and fast. In the context of a smart factory, classifying a given hand gesture is important for ensuring correct operation. In this study, we collected electromyography signal data from hand gestures and used them to train a convolutional recurrent neural network. The trained classifier model achieved 96% accuracy for 10 gestures in real time. We also verified the universality of the classifier by testing it on 11 different participants.