Learning task-specific models for reach to grasp movements: Towards EMG-based teleoperation of robotic arm-hand systems

Abstract

A learning scheme based on Random Forests is used to decode the EMG activity of 16 muscles of the human arm-hand system to a continuous representation of kinematics in reach-to-grasp movements in 3D space. Classification methods are used to discriminate between significantly different reach to grasp strategies, formulating a switching mechanism that may trigger the use of position and object-specific decoding models (task-specificity). These task-specific models can achieve better estimation results than the general models for the kinematics of different reach-to-grasp movements. The efficacy of the proposed methodology is assessed through a strict validation procedure, based on everyday life reach-to-grasp scenarios and data not previously seen during training. Finally, for demonstration purposes, the authors teleoperate an arm-hand model in the OpenRave simulation environment using the estimated from the EMG signals human motion.