A novel HCI based on EMG and IMU

The technology of human-computer interaction (HCI) is developing rapidly in tandem with the advancement of information and biological technologies. Many new types input device are introduced into this field; some of them are aimed to benefit special groups of people like old or disabled persons. In the meantime, Electromyography (EMG) and Inertia Measure Unit (IMU) have been readily available and extensively applied in control systems in many fields. In this paper, we propose a novel EMG-IMU based mouse controller that controls cursor movements based on IMU signals. The displacement of the cursor is determined by integrating the acceleration signal from the IMU, which moves with the operator´s arm. The mouse operations such as left click, right click and wheel scroll, are commanded through EMG signals. The pattern recognition algorithm, Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA), is adopted to classify the EMG data into several clusters, which correspond to the pre-defined mouse operations. Experimental results have indicated that the proposed mouse controller can achieve an accuracy of 88%.