TY - JOUR
T1 - A shared robot control system combining augmented reality and motor imagery brain-computer interfaces with eye tracking
AU - Dillen, Arnau
AU - Omidi, Mohsen
AU - Ghaffari, Fakhreddine
AU - Vanderborght, Bram
AU - Roelands, Bart
AU - Romain, Olivier
AU - Nowé, Ann
AU - De Pauw, Kevin
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2024 The Author(s). Published by IOP Publishing Ltd.
PY - 2024/9/25
Y1 - 2024/9/25
N2 - Objective: Brain-computer interface (BCI) control systems monitor neural activity to detect the user's intentions, enabling device control through mental imagery. Despite their potential, decoding neural activity in real-world conditions poses significant challenges, making BCIs currently impractical compared to traditional interaction methods. This study introduces a novel motor imagery (MI) BCI control strategy for operating a physically assistive robotic arm, addressing the difficulties of MI decoding from electroencephalogram (EEG) signals, which are inherently non-stationary and vary across individuals.
Approach: A proof-of-concept BCI control system was developed using commercially available hardware, integrating MI with eye tracking in an augmented reality (AR) user interface to facilitate a shared control approach. This system proposes actions based on the user's gaze, enabling selection through imagined movements. A user study was conducted to evaluate the system's usability, focusing on its effectiveness and efficiency.
Main results:Participants performed tasks that simulated everyday activities with the robotic arm, demonstrating the shared control system's feasibility and practicality in real-world scenarios. Despite low online decoding performance (mean accuracy: 0.52 9, F1: 0.29, Cohen's Kappa: 0.12), participants achieved a mean success rate of 0.83 in the final phase of the user study when given 15 minutes to complete the evaluation tasks. The success rate dropped below 0.5 when a 5-minute cutoff time was selected.
Significance: These results indicate that integrating AR and eye tracking can significantly enhance the usability of BCI systems, despite the complexities of MI-EEG decoding. While efficiency is still low, the effectiveness of our approach was verified. This suggests that BCI systems have the potential to become a viable interaction modality for everyday applications
in the future.
AB - Objective: Brain-computer interface (BCI) control systems monitor neural activity to detect the user's intentions, enabling device control through mental imagery. Despite their potential, decoding neural activity in real-world conditions poses significant challenges, making BCIs currently impractical compared to traditional interaction methods. This study introduces a novel motor imagery (MI) BCI control strategy for operating a physically assistive robotic arm, addressing the difficulties of MI decoding from electroencephalogram (EEG) signals, which are inherently non-stationary and vary across individuals.
Approach: A proof-of-concept BCI control system was developed using commercially available hardware, integrating MI with eye tracking in an augmented reality (AR) user interface to facilitate a shared control approach. This system proposes actions based on the user's gaze, enabling selection through imagined movements. A user study was conducted to evaluate the system's usability, focusing on its effectiveness and efficiency.
Main results:Participants performed tasks that simulated everyday activities with the robotic arm, demonstrating the shared control system's feasibility and practicality in real-world scenarios. Despite low online decoding performance (mean accuracy: 0.52 9, F1: 0.29, Cohen's Kappa: 0.12), participants achieved a mean success rate of 0.83 in the final phase of the user study when given 15 minutes to complete the evaluation tasks. The success rate dropped below 0.5 when a 5-minute cutoff time was selected.
Significance: These results indicate that integrating AR and eye tracking can significantly enhance the usability of BCI systems, despite the complexities of MI-EEG decoding. While efficiency is still low, the effectiveness of our approach was verified. This suggests that BCI systems have the potential to become a viable interaction modality for everyday applications
in the future.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85206496497&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1088/1741-2552/ad7f8d
DO - 10.1088/1741-2552/ad7f8d
M3 - Article
C2 - 39321842
VL - 21
JO - Journal of Neural Engineering
JF - Journal of Neural Engineering
SN - 1741-2552
IS - 5
M1 - 056028
ER -