A wearable real-time BCI system based on mobile cloud computing

Abstract

Pervasive and wearable brain-computer interface (BCI) systems show great potential for effectively understanding human mental activities and intentions in their daily life. In this paper, we propose a real-time BCI system based on mobile devices and cloud computing to detect and recognize the user's mental states. A proof-of-concept prototype is developed based on a wearable, commercially available EEG headset, an Android smartphone, and a multi-core computing server. We demonstrate an integrated Android app containing three built-in functional modules. Specifically, a graphical window can receive and display continuous EEG data acquired from the headset in a real-time manner; a facial expression interface can indicate the user's mental states according to the analysis of EEG data on the server; and a retrospective analysis tool to investigate the mental behaviors over a long period of time.