Taşınabilir ve gömülü bir SSVEP BCI sistemi: emBCI

The objective of a brain-computer interface (BCI) is to provide an alternative way of interaction between the brain and the environment without the involvement of muscular pathways. Besides being a revolutionary human computer interface for gaming and entertainment, BCIs constitute the only way of interaction/communication with the outer world for people who cannot voluntarily control/move their muscles. Electroencephalography (EEG) is a non-invasive method for measuring the electrical activity generated within the brain structures, through the scalp. Although new consumer grade, wireless, portable and battery-powered EEG headsets are recently gaining popularity, most of the non-invasive BCI research depends on high quality but bulky and expensive EEG acquisition systems. Combined with a decent PC to implement the software stack of the BCI, the cost of the overall BCI design increases and the technology quickly becomes unaffordable for many people. In this study, we present a portable and embedded steady-state visual evoked potential BCI system in which the user can choose between two targets by focusing on 2 LED matrices flickering at different frequencies. The output of the system can then be used for different interaction scenarios like controlling a robot, answering simple yes/no questions, etc. The use of a consumer grade, wireless EEG headset together with a cheap embedded computer increases the mobility of the system while reducing the overall cost dramatically.