  In recent years, deep learning algorithms have become increasingly more
prominent for their unparalleled ability to automatically learn discriminant
features from large amounts of data. However, within the field of
electromyography-based gesture recognition, deep learning algorithms are seldom
employed as they require an unreasonable amount of effort from a single person,
to generate tens of thousands of examples.
  This work's hypothesis is that general, informative features can be learned
from the large amounts of data generated by aggregating the signals of multiple
users, thus reducing the recording burden while enhancing gesture recognition.
Consequently, this paper proposes applying transfer learning on aggregated data
from multiple users, while leveraging the capacity of deep learning algorithms
to learn discriminant features from large datasets. Two datasets comprised of
19 and 17 able-bodied participants respectively (the first one is employed for
pre-training) were recorded for this work, using the Myo Armband. A third Myo
Armband dataset was taken from the NinaPro database and is comprised of 10
able-bodied participants. Three different deep learning networks employing
three different modalities as input (raw EMG, Spectrograms and Continuous
Wavelet Transform (CWT)) are tested on the second and third dataset. The
proposed transfer learning scheme is shown to systematically and significantly
enhance the performance for all three networks on the two datasets, achieving
an offline accuracy of 98.31% for 7 gestures over 17 participants for the
CWT-based ConvNet and 68.98% for 18 gestures over 10 participants for the raw
EMG-based ConvNet. Finally, a use-case study employing eight able-bodied
participants suggests that real-time feedback allows users to adapt their
muscle activation strategy which reduces the degradation in accuracy normally
experienced over time.
