A self-paced BCI system to control an electric wheelchair: Evaluation of a commercial, low-cost EEG device

Abstract

The electrical cerebral activity has been already used in several applications aiming at improving the daily life of impaired people with strong motor disabilities. In particular the Electroencephalogram signals (EEG) have been used to provide new ways for communication and control. However, such kind of technology presents some important drawbacks such as the price and the difficulty to prepare the system without an expert's support. This work intends to build a user-friendly, self-paced Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) system that allows using commercial EEG headsets in order to drive an electrical wheelchair with a motor imagery approach. Furthermore, the conceived system has been used for a first evaluation of a commercial, low-cost, EEG device compared with data coming from a professional device. The result shows that the low cost EEG device, at the actual state of the art, provide interesting results but can hardly be used for self-paced systems in error sensitive context.