sEMG-Based Upper Limb Movement Classifier: Current Scenario and Upcoming Challenges

Despite achieving accuracies higher than 90% on recognizing upper-limb movements through sEMG (surface Electromyography) signal with the state of art classifiers in the laboratory environment, there are still issues to be addressed for a myo-controlled prosthesis achieve similar performance in real environment conditions. Thereby, the main goal of this review is to expose the latest researches in terms of strategies in each block of the system, giving a global view of the current state of academic research. A systematic review was conducted, and the retrieved papers were organized according to the system step related to the proposed method. Then, for each stage of the upper limb motion recognition system, the works were described and compared in terms of strategy, methodology and issue addressed. An additional section was destined for the description of works related to signal contamination that is often neglected in reviews focused on sEMG based motion classifiers. Therefore, this section is the main contribution of this paper. Deep learning methods are a current trend for classification stage, providing strategies based on time-series and transfer learning to address the issues related to limb position, temporal/inter-subject variation, and electrode displacement. Despite the promising strategies presented for contaminant detection, identification, and removal, there are still some factors to be considered, such as the occurrence of simultaneous contaminants. This review exposes the current scenario of the movement classification system, providing valuable information for new researchers and guiding future works towards myo-controlled devices.