EMG-Based Gesture Recognition

Ask about this topic

Overview

The field uses surface electromyography (EMG)—electrical activity measured at the skin—to infer gestures and movement intent, enabling hands-free control of prostheses, assistive devices, and interactive systems. Approaches range from time- and frequency-domain features with classifiers such as LDA and SVM to CNNs, recurrent and graph networks, and multimodal models that fuse EMG with inertial, pressure, or visual signals. Current work explores self-supervised pretraining, cross-user and cross-session adaptation, and compact models that can run with low latency on wearable hardware. A central challenge is maintaining reliable performance across people, sensor placements, sessions, and spontaneous movements without requiring extensive labeled calibration data.

Latest papers

CardsList

26 papers3 papers in the last four weeks, down 40% on the four weeks before. 0.0% of all new papers.

  1. Cross-User Adaptation for sEMG Gesture Recognition via Continual Learning

    Oct 25, 2026Aran Ramakrishnan, Shubhi Mishra, Tyler Ham +2EMG-Based Gesture RecognitionContinual Learning

    Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of California, Santa Cruz, CA 95064, USA

  2. Is User Calibration Still Necessary for Continuous Myoelectric Control? A Closed-Loop Comparison of Calibration-Free Controllers

    Oct 17, 2026Amir Reza Hariri, Kevin B. Englehart, Erik SchemeContinuous ControlEMG-Based Gesture Recognition

    Institute of Biomedical Engineering and the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, NB E3B 5A3, Canada.

  3. LiteEMG-FM: An Efficient and Deployable Foundation Model for Robust EMG Sensing

    Oct 1, 2026Tianhao Wu, Xu Wu, Amirmohammad Radmehr +4EMG-Based Gesture RecognitionTime-Series Foundation Models

    University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia, United States · Computer Science, University of Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma, United States · Wireless and Sensor Systems Lab (WSSL), University of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst, Massachusetts, United States +1

  4. EMGBlend: Heterogeneity-Aware Self-Supervised Pretraining for Gesture and Force Decoding

    Sep 22, 2026Yuwei Jia, Cheng Zhong, Jinyang Yu +1EMG-Based Gesture RecognitionSelf-Supervised Pre-Training

    Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, China · Dexwise, China · Shenzhen University, China

  5. MyoFlow: Anchor-Tied Rectified Flow for HD-sEMG Gesture Recognition Across Sessions and Subjects

    Sep 15, 2026Chenhao Wu, Dingjie Peng, Zhihe Zhang +6EMG-Based Gesture RecognitionFlow Matching

    Waseda University, Japan · KDDI Research Inc., Japan · The University of Manchester, UK

  6. Deep Neural Networks for Learning Intent from sEMG Signals to Support Hardware Devices for Post-Stroke Neurorehabilitation

    Sep 9, 2026Zakariyya Brewster, Divy Wadhwani, Emily Yan +5EMG-Based Gesture RecognitionSurface Electromyography

    Department of Engineering Science University of Toronto · Computer and Mathematical Sciences University of Toronto Scarborough · Department of Computer Science University of Toronto +3

  7. Wearable Multimodal Human-Machine Interface for Integrated Hand Intentions Decoding in Dynamic Teleoperation

    Sep 7, 2026Jiaxuan Li, Yinshi Wu, Xiao Zhang +4EMG-Based Gesture RecognitionRobotic Grasping

    Intelligent Equipment and Medical Device Laboratory, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian 116024, China. · Manufacturing Laboratory, Department of Mechanical Engineering, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo 113-8656, Japan.

  8. Data-Centric Neuromotor Interfaces for Portable Human-Machine Interaction

    Aug 31, 2026Jiaxuan Li, Di Wu, Jianhua Liu +7EMG-Based Gesture RecognitionWearable Sensing

    Intelligent Equipment and Medical Device Laboratory, School of Mechanical Engineering, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian 116024, China. · Manufacturing Laboratory, Department of Mechanical Engineering, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo 113-8656, Japan. · Institute of Robotics and Intelligent Systems, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian 116024, China. +1

  9. Recognition and Label-Free Adaptation Across Recording Sessions in Surface-EMG Gesture Decoding

    Jul 30, 2026Jethro Odeyemi, W. J. ZhangEMG-Based Gesture RecognitionTest-Time Adaptation

    Division of Biomedical Engineering, University of Saskatchewan, 57 Campus Drive, Saskatoon, SK, S7N 5A9, Canada

  10. A Montage-Agnostic Encoder for Calibration-Light Cross-User Gesture Recognition from Surface Electromyography

    Jul 30, 2026Jethro Odeyemi, W. J. ZhangEMG-Based Gesture RecognitionFew-Shot Learning

    Division of Biomedical Engineering, University of Saskatchewan, 57 Campus Drive, Saskatoon, SK, S7N 5A9, Canada

  11. Prototype Adaptation for Zero-Shot sEMG Movement Classification

    Jul 28, 2026Rui Liu, Benjamin PaassenEMG-Based Gesture RecognitionZero-Shot Learning

    Faculty of Technology, Bielefeld University

  12. Multimodal Surface EMG Hand Gesture Recognition Using Query-Based Transformers for Prosthetic Control

    Jul 24, 2026Federico Del Pup, Elisa Tentori, Manfredo AtzoriEMG-Based Gesture RecognitionHybrid CNN-Transformer Architectures

    Department of Information Engineering, University of Padua, Padua, 35131, Italy · Padova Neuroscience Center, University of Padua, Padua, 35129, Italy · Department of Biomedical Sciences, University of Padua, Padua, 35131, Italy +2

  13. An Exploratory Study of Single Channel Surface Electromyography for Hand Gesture Classification

    Jul 17, 2026Daanish HindustaniEMG-Based Gesture Recognition

    Department of Computer Science, University of Minnesota

  14. A Graph Neural Network Model for Real-Time Gesture Recognition Based on sEMG Signals

    Jul 8, 2026Pragatheeswaran Vipulanandan, Kamal Premaratne, Manohar MurthiEMG-Based Gesture RecognitionGraph Neural Networks

    Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering University of Miami Coral Gables, Florida, USA

  15. Conservative Subject Invariant EMG-based Gesture Recognition

    Jul 4, 2026Hamed Rafiei, Ali MousaviEMG-Based Gesture RecognitionAdversarial Representation Learning

    Department of Electrical Engineering, Center of Excellence on Soft Computing and Intelligent Information Processing, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Mashhad, Iran · Department of Computer Engineering, Ne. C., Islamic Azad University, Neyshabur, Iran

  16. PGUDA: Pressure-Guided Unsupervised Domain Adaptation with Cross-Modal Knowledge Distillation for sEMG-Based Gesture Recognition

    Jun 30, 2026Yurui Liu, Xiao-Cong Zhong, Qisong Wang +3EMG-Based Gesture RecognitionCross-Modal Knowledge Distillation

    School of Instrumentation Science and Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150001, China

  17. Temporal Posed and Spontaneous Gesture Recognition from Electromyography in the Rock-Paper-Scissors Game

    Jun 28, 2026Xin Wei, Huakun Liu, Felix Dollack +1EMG-Based Gesture RecognitionHuman Activity Recognition

    Nara Institute of Science and Technology Nara, Japan

  18. SoftPINCH: EMG-Driven Soft Exoskeleton Assistance for Finger Flexion and Grasping

    Jun 3, 2026Nicklas Nikolaj Grønvall, Magnus Malthe Sigsgaard Nielsen, Xiaofeng Xiong +1EMG-Based Gesture RecognitionRobotic Grasping

    SDU Soft Robotics, The Maersk Mc-Kinney Moller Institute, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark

  19. MyoSem: Aligning Electromyography with Natural-Language Action Semantics

    May 29, 2026Chiyue Wang, Yang Gao, Zhanpeng JinEMG-Based Gesture RecognitionMultimodal Embedding

    South China University of Technology

  20. NeuroEdge: Real-Time Hand Gesture Recognition with High-Density EMG Using Deep Learning at the Edge

    May 28, 2026Peter Chudinov, Zhenyu Lin, Jay Motamarry +3EMG-Based Gesture RecognitionEfficient Neural Network Inference

    Department of Biology1 · School of Engineering in Computer Engineering2 at San Francisco State University, San Francisco, CA 94132. · College of San Mateo3, CA 94402. +1

  21. Unsupervised clustering and classification of upper limb EMG signals during functional movements: a data-driven

    May 20, 2026L. F. Salazar Álvarez, D. Escobar-Saltarén, M. B. Salazar Sánchez +1EMG-Based Gesture RecognitionClustering

    In2Lab, Engineer Faculty, Universidad de Antioquia. Medellín, Calle 70 No. 52-21, A.A. 1226 · School of Engineering and Sciencies, Tecnológico de Monterrey. Guadalajara, México

  22. EgoEMG: A Multimodal Egocentric Dataset with Bilateral EMG and Vision for Hand Pose Estimation

    May 7, 2026Ziheng Xi, Jiayi Yu, Yitao Wang +3EMG-Based Gesture Recognition3D Hand Pose Estimation

    Department of Automation, Tsinghua University

  23. From Muscle Bursts to Motor Intent: Self-Supervised Token Modeling for Heterogeneous EMG

    May 5, 2026Zhenghao Huang, Huilin Yao, Kaikai WangEMG-Based Gesture RecognitionHuman Activity Recognition

    South China University of Technology

  24. Bias in Surface Electromyography Features across a Demographically Diverse Cohort

    Apr 15, 2026Aditi Agrawal, Celine John Philip, Giancarlo K. Sagastume +5Surface ElectromyographyEMG-Based Gesture Recognition

    Graduate Group in Computer Science, University of California, Davis · Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of California, Davis · Department of Mechanical and Mechatronic Engineering and Advanced Manufacturing, California State University, Chico +6

  25. Lightweight Test-Time Adaptation for EMG-Based Gesture Recognition

    Jan 7, 2026Nia Touko, Matthew O A Ellis, Cristiano Capone +3EMG-Based Gesture RecognitionTest-Time Adaptation

    School of Computer Science, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, S10 2TN, United Kingdom · Natl. Center for Radiation Protection and Computational Physics, Istituto Superiore di Sanità, 00161 Rome, Italy · Politecnico di Torino, Italy +1

  26. Development of a Low-Cost Prosthetic Hand Using Electromyography and Machine Learning

    Nov 23, 2024Mosab Diab, Ashraf Mohammed, Yinlai JiangAssistive RoboticsRobotic Hand Design

    Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Khartoum, Khartoum, Sudan · Center for Neuroscience and Biomedical Engineering, The University of Electro-Communications, Chofu, Tokyo, Japan