American Sign Language Recognition System by Using Surface EMG Signal

Sign Language Recognition (SLR) system is a novel method that allows hard of hearing to communicate with general society. In this study, American Sign Language (ASL) recognition system was proposed by using the surface Electromyography (sEMG). The objective of this study is to recognize the American Sign Language alphabet letters and allow users to spell words and sentences. For this purpose, sEMG data are acquired from subject right forearm for twenty-seven American Sign Language gestures of twenty-six English alphabets and one for home position. Time and frequency domain (band power) information used in the feature extraction process. As a classification method, Support Vector Machine and Ensemble Learning algorithm were used and their performances are compared with tabulated results. In conclusion, the results of this study show that sEMG signal can be used for SLR systems

A Physiological Computing System to Improve Human-Robot Collaboration by Using Human Comfort Index

Fluent human-robot collaboration requires a robot teammate to understand, learn, and adapt to the human\u27s psycho-physiological state. Such collaborations require a physiological computing system that monitors human biological signals during human-robot collaboration (HRC) to quantitatively estimate a human\u27s level of comfort, which we have termed in this research as comfortability index (CI) and uncomfortability index (UnCI). We proposed a human comfort index estimation system (CIES) that uses biological signals and subjective metrics. Subjective metrics (surprise, anxiety, boredom, calmness, and comfortability) and physiological signals were collected during a human-robot collaboration experiment that varied the robot\u27s behavior. The emotion circumplex model is adapted to calculate the CI from the participant\u27s quantitative data as well as physiological data. This thesis developed a physiological computing system that estimates human comfort levels from physiological by using the circumplex model approach. The data was collected from multiple experiments and machine learning models trained, and their performance was evaluated. As a result, a subject-independent model was tested to determine the robot behavior based on human comfort level. The results from multiple experiments indicate that the proposed CIES model improves human comfort by providing feedback to the robot. In conclusion, physiological signals can be used for personalized robots, and it has the potential to improve safety for humans and increase the fluency of collaboration