An Electric Wheelchair Manipulating System Using SSVEP-Based BCI System

Abstract

Most people with motor disabilities use a joystick to control an electric wheelchair. However, those who suffer from multiple sclerosis or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis may require other methods to control an electric wheelchair. This study implements an electroencephalography (EEG)-based brain–computer interface (BCI) system and a steady-state visual evoked potential (SSVEP) to manipulate an electric wheelchair. While operating the human–machine interface, three types of SSVEP scenarios involving a real-time virtual stimulus are displayed on a monitor or mixed reality (MR) goggles to produce the EEG signals. Canonical correlation analysis (CCA) is used to classify the EEG signals into the corresponding class of command and the information transfer rate (ITR) is used to determine the effect. The experimental results show that the proposed SSVEP stimulus generates the EEG signals because of the high classification accuracy of CCA. This is used to control an electric wheelchair along a specific path. Simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) is the mapping method that is available in the robotic operating software (ROS) platform that is used for the wheelchair system for this study.

Keywords

• brain–computer interface (BCI)
• steady-state visual evoked potential (SSVEP)
• augmented reality (AR)
• canonical correlation analysis (CCA)
• electric wheelchair
• simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM)