Chinese sign language recognition based on surface electromyography and motion information

PLoS One. 2023 Dec 7;18(12):e0295398. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0295398. eCollection 2023.

Abstract

Sign language (SL) has strong structural features. Various gestures and the complex trajectories of hand movements bring challenges to sign language recognition (SLR). Based on the inherent correlation between gesture and trajectory of SL action, SLR is organically divided into gesture-based recognition and gesture-related movement trajectory recognition. One hundred and twenty commonly used Chinese SL words involving 9 gestures and 8 movement trajectories, are selected as research and test objects. The method based on the amplitude state of surface electromyography (sEMG) signal and acceleration signal is used for vocabulary segmentation. The multi-sensor decision fusion method of coupled hidden Markov model is used to complete the recognition of SL vocabulary, and the average recognition rate is 90.41%. Experiments show that the method of sEMG signal and motion information fusion has good practicability in SLR.

MeSH terms

  • Algorithms
  • China
  • Electromyography
  • Gestures
  • Hand
  • Humans
  • Pattern Recognition, Automated*
  • Sign Language*

Grants and funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the award number is 62171171. This work was supported by the Natural Science Foundation of Zhejiang Province, the award number is LZ23F030005.