Pattern recognition control outperforms conventional myoelectric control in upper limb patients with targeted muscle reinnervation

Pattern recognition myoelectric control shows great promise as an alternative to conventional amplitude based control to control multiple degree of freedom prosthetic limbs. Many studies have reported pattern recognition classification error performances of less than 10% during offline tests; however, it remains unclear how this translates to real-time control performance. In this contribution, we compare the real-time control performances between pattern recognition and direct myoelectric control (a popular form of conventional amplitude control) for participants who had received targeted muscle reinnervation. The real-time performance was evaluated during three tasks; 1) a box and blocks task, 2) a clothespin relocation task, and 3) a block stacking task. Our results found that pattern recognition significantly outperformed direct control for all three performance tasks. Furthermore, it was found that pattern recognition was configured much quicker. The classification error of the pattern recognition systems used by the patients was found to be 16% ±(1.6%) suggesting that systems with this error rate may still provide excellent control. Finally, patients qualitatively preferred using pattern recognition control and reported the resulting control to be smoother and more consistent.