Continuous Brain-Actuated Control of an Intelligent Wheelchair by Human EEG

The objective of this study is to assess the feasibility of controlling an asynchronous and non-invasive brain-actuated wheelchair by human EEG. Three subjects were asked to mentally drive the wheelchair to 3 target locations using 3 mental commands. These mental commands were respectively associated with the three wheelchair steering behaviors: emphturn left, emphturn right, and emphmove forward. The subjects participated in 30 randomized trials (10 trials per target). The performance was assessed in terms of percentage of reached targets calculated in function of the distance between the final wheelchair position and the target at each trial. To assess the brain-actuated control achieved by the subjects, their performances were compared with the performance achieved by a random BCI. The subjects drove the wheelchair closer than 1 meter from the target in 20%, 37%, and 7% of the trials, and closer than 2 meters in 37%, 53%, and 27% of the trials, respectively. The random BCI drove it closer than 1 and 2 meters in 0% and 13% of the trials, respectively. The results show that the subjects could achieve a significant level of mental control, even if far from optimal, to drive an intelligent wheelchair, thus demonstrating the feasibility of continuously controlling complex robotics devices using an asynchronous and non-invasive BCI.