A novel P300-based BCI system for words typing

Abstract

The conventional P300 BCI system for character spelling is typically composed of a paradigm that displays flashing characters and a classifier which identifies target characters. Typically a user has to type each character of a word at a time: this spelling process is slow and it can take several minutes to type an entire word. In this work, we propose a new word typing scheme by integrating a word suggestion mechanism via a dictionary search into the conventional P300-based speller. Our new P300-based word typing system consists of an initial character spelling paradigm, a smart dictionary unit to give suggestions of possible words, and the final word selection paradigm to select a word out of the suggestions. Our proposed methodology reduces typing time significantly and makes word typing more convenient. We have tested our system with four subjects and our results demonstrate an average words typing time of 1.66 minute, whereas the conventional took 2.9 minute for the same words.