Prosthetic hand control using speech and sEMG

This paper presents a new prosthetic hand control using speech and sEMG for forearm amputees. sEMG signals can often be affected by operators' biological conditions such as fatigue, sleepiness, flush, etc. Speech signals, in contrast, are relatively unaffected by the operators' biological conditions. To enhance reliability and usability of the prosthetic hand operation, the proposed hand has two control modes — speech based and sEMG based. The switch between the two control modes is executed by recognition of a speech switch command. Experimental evaluations to show the effectiveness of the proposed prosthetic hand control are presented using our developed prosthetic hand called PFront.