The Impact of Artifacts on the BCI Control Channel for a Robotic Wheelchair

Abstract

There are many ways to control robotic devices. The modern and actual technology of brain-computer interfaces (BCI) is one of the ways to implement a control channel. This way provides additional control options for the operator, such as using facial expressions, mental activity and head movements. However, BCI is far from being used in everyday life conditions in part because of the influence of various noises that provoke changes in the EEG signal, called artifacts. Therefore, it is necessary to evaluate the impact of these noises on control commands executed using BCI and take this impact into account during the control commands design. This is especially true when several commands, that require various types of movements (facial expressions, head movements), are used in a single control configuration, since these commands themselves provoke such noises and guarantee their occurrence in the control process. In this paper, we considered a set of BCI commands for control a robotic wheelchair and propose a system of metrics for assessing the impact of artifacts on these commands. The system of metrics was used to assess the mutual impact of commands to each other and avoid conflicts of commands arising from the occurrence of artifacts.