Abstract
BackgroundPeople with severe disabilities, e.g. due to neurodegenerative disease, depend on technology that allows for accurate wheelchair control. For those who cannot operate a wheelchair with a joystick, brain-computer interfaces (BCI) may offer a valuable option. Technology depending on visual or auditory input may not be feasible as these modalities are dedicated to processing of environmental stimuli (e.g. recognition of obstacles, ambient noise). Herein we thus validated the feasibility of a BCI based on tactually-evoked event-related potentials (ERP) for wheelchair control. Furthermore, we investigated use of a dynamic stopping method to improve speed of the tactile BCI system.MethodsPositions of four tactile stimulators represented navigation directions (left thigh: move left; right thigh: move right; abdomen: move forward; lower neck: move backward) and N = 15 participants delivered navigation commands by focusing their attention on the desired tactile stimulus in an oddball-paradigm.ResultsParticipants navigated a virtual wheelchair through a building and eleven participants successfully completed the task of reaching 4 checkpoints in the building. The virtual wheelchair was equipped with simulated shared-control sensors (collision avoidance), yet these sensors were rarely needed.ConclusionWe conclude that most participants achieved tactile ERP-BCI control sufficient to reliably operate a wheelchair and dynamic stopping was of high value for tactile ERP classification. Finally, this paper discusses feasibility of tactile ERPs for BCI based wheelchair control.
Highlights
People with severe disabilities, e.g. due to neurodegenerative disease, depend on technology that allows for accurate wheelchair control
brain-computer interfaces (BCI) constitute a promising assistive technology device for people with severe motor impairment, e.g. due to neurodegenerative disease (e.g., [5,6,7,8,9,10]). Researchers suggested their use for wheelchair control (e.g., [11]), rendering BCIs of high value for people with severe paralysis who are not able to control a wheelchair by means of a joystick (e.g., [12])
We investigated the potential of dynamic stopping on performance and timing in tactile event-related potentials (ERP)-BCIs. (3) we evaluated device satisfaction following the user-centered approach [10,63]
Summary
E.g. due to neurodegenerative disease, depend on technology that allows for accurate wheelchair control. For those who cannot operate a wheelchair with a joystick, brain-computer interfaces (BCI) may offer a valuable option. Brain-computer interfaces (BCI) allow for direct communication between a person’s brain and technical devices without the need for motor control (for review, [1,2,3,4]). BCIs constitute a promising assistive technology device for people with severe motor impairment, e.g. due to neurodegenerative disease (e.g., [5,6,7,8,9,10]). BCIs may become a feasible alternative for wheelchair control
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