A Wearable SSVEP-Based BCI System for Quadcopter Control Using Head-Mounted Device

TLDR

BCI offers a promising avenue to restore interaction between disabled individuals and the 3‑D physical world. The study aims to develop a wearable SSVEP‑based BCI that enables 3‑D quadcopter navigation with asynchronous switch control and a new information‑transfer‑rate metric. The system employs a head‑mounted SSVEP BCI that isolates head‑movement transitions online to generate hover commands, incorporates asynchronous switch control, and uses a newly proposed information‑transfer‑rate metric. Experiments showed that users could accurately and smoothly complete 3‑D quadcopter flight tasks, demonstrating the system’s feasibility and practicality.

Abstract

Restoring the interaction between disabled people and the 3-D physical world via a brain-computer interface (BCI) is an exciting topic. To this end, we designed a wearable BCI system based on the steady-state visual evoked potential (SSVEP), which enables 3-D navigation of quadcopter flight with immersive first-person visual feedback using a head-mounted device. In addition, to alleviate the user's operational burden, this paper provides asynchronous switch control for the users. The transitional state due to head movement in an asynchronous BCI was isolated online and translated into hover to eliminate its influence. The experimental results in the physical environment showed that the subjects could accomplish the 3-D flight tasks accurately and smoothly using our system. In particular, in this paper, we proposed an information transfer rate metric that is suitable for the asynchronous task. We demonstrated the feasibility of using the head-mounted device and a proper control strategy to facilitate the portability and practicability of the SSVEP-based BCI system for its navigation utility.