EEG-based asynchronous BCI control of a car in 3D virtual reality environments

Brain computer interface (BCI) aims at creating new communication channels without depending on brain’s normal output channels of peripheral nerves and muscles. However, natural and sophisticated interactions manner between brain and computer still remain challenging. In this paper, we investigate how the duration of event-related desynchronization/synchronization (ERD/ERS) caused by motor imagery (MI) can be modulated and used as an additional control parameter beyond simple binary decisions. Furthermore, using the non-time-locked properties of sustained (de)synchronization, we have developed an asynchronous BCI system for driving a car in 3D virtual reality environment (VRE) based on cumulative incremental control strategy. The extensive real time experiments confirmed that our new approach is able to drive smoothly a virtual car within challenging VRE only by the MI tasks without involving any muscular activities.

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