Upper Limb Movement Recognition utilising EEG and EMG Signals for Rehabilitative Robotics

TL;DR

This paper presents a novel multisensor fusion approach combining EEG and EMG signals for improved upper limb movement recognition in rehabilitative robotics, addressing noise and weak signal issues.

Contribution

It introduces a new decision-level fusion technique and evaluates its effectiveness using a publicly available dataset, enhancing movement classification accuracy.

Findings

Effective integration of EEG and EMG signals improves classification performance.

The proposed system demonstrates feasibility on the WAY-EEG-GAL dataset.

Fusion of multisensor data enhances robustness against noise and weak signals.

Abstract

Upper limb movement classification, which maps input signals to the target activities, is a key building block in the control of rehabilitative robotics. Classifiers are trained for the rehabilitative system to comprehend the desires of the patient whose upper limbs do not function properly. Electromyography (EMG) signals and Electroencephalography (EEG) signals are used widely for upper limb movement classification. By analysing the classification results of the real-time EEG and EMG signals, the system can understand the intention of the user and predict the events that one would like to carry out. Accordingly, it will provide external help to the user. However, the noise in the real-time EEG and EMG data collection process contaminates the effectiveness of the data, which undermines classification performance. Moreover, not all patients process strong EMG signals due to muscle damage and neuromuscular disorder. To address these issues, this paper explores different feature extraction techniques and machine learning and deep learning models for EEG and EMG signals classification and proposes a novel decision-level multisensor fusion technique to integrate EEG signals with EMG signals. This system retrieves effective information from both sources to understand and predict the desire of the user, and thus aid. By testing out the proposed technique on a publicly available WAY-EEG-GAL dataset, which contains EEG and EMG signals that were recorded simultaneously, we manage to conclude the feasibility and effectiveness of the novel system.