A Self-Paced BCI With a Collaborative Controller for Highly Reliable Wheelchair Driving: Experimental Tests With Physically Disabled Individuals

Abstract

Brain-controlled wheelchairs (BCWs) are a promising solution for people with severe motor disabilities, who cannot use conventional interfaces. However, the low reliability of electroencephalographic signal decoding and the high user's workload imposed by continuous control of a wheelchair requires effective approaches. In this article, we propose a self-paced P300-based brain–computer interface (BCI) combined with dynamic time-window commands and a collaborative controller. The self-paced approach allows users to switch between control and noncontrol states without requiring any additional task or mental strategy, while the dynamic time-window commands allow balancing the reliability and speed of the BCI. The collaborative controller, combining user's intentions and navigation information, offers the possibility to navigate in complex environments and to improve the overall system reliability. The feasibility of the proposed approach and the impact of each system component (self-paced, dynamic time window, and collaborative controller) are systematically validated in a set of experiments conducted with seven able-bodied participants and six physically disabled participants steering a robotic wheelchair in real-office-like environments. These two groups controlled the BCW with a final driving accuracy greater than 99%. Quantitative and subjective results, assessed through questionnaires, attest to the effectiveness of the proposed approach. Altogether, these findings contribute to improving the usability of BCWs and, hence, the potential for their use by target users in home settings.