Hidden Markov model classification of myoelectric signals in speech

A hidden Markov model based classifier is proposed in this paper to perform automatic speech recognition using myoelectric signals from the muscles of vocal articulation. The classifier's resilience to temporal variance is compared to a linear discriminant analysis classifier that was used in a pervious study. Speech recognition was performed, using five channels of myoelectric signals, on isolated words from a 10-word vocabulary. Temporal variance was induced by temporally misaligning data from the test set, with respect to the training set. When compared to the LDA classifier, the hidden Markov model classifier demonstrated a markedly lower variation in classification error due to the temporal misalignment. Characteristics of the hidden Markov model MES classifier suggest that it would effectively complement a conventional acoustic speech recognizer, in a multi-modal speech recognition system.