On the Gesture Recognition of a Faint Phantom Motion for the Control of a Transradial Prosthesis amidst varying Contraction Forces

Abstract

The variation of the contraction force associated with the phantom motion used for the actuation of a bionic upper-limb prosthesis represents a scenario encountered regularly by amputees, while prior research appears to not have been able to succinctly address this problem. In this study, an extended prosthesis control system is proposed which is able to recognise gesture intent motions alongside the prediction of an associated contraction force as part of an advanced pattern recognition system. As part of this research topic, this paper introduces the proposed control architecture and is based on the solving of the gesture recognition problem amidst varying contraction forces for a transradial amputee with a seemingly faint phantom motion.The work involves the application of a novel decomposition algorithm and the use of a set of computationally effective features, alongside the contrast of the recognition capabilities of the proposed approach using various classification models. The results show an enhanced recognition of gesture motion intent with the use of the decomposition method, despite the faint phantom motion signal from the amputee.