Towards the Development of a Brain Semi-controlled Wheelchair for Navigation in Indoor Environments

Several technological advancements emerged providing the technical assistance supporting people with special needs in tackling their everyday tasks. Particularly, with the advancements in cost-effective Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCI), they can be very useful for people with disabilities to improve their quality of life. This paper investigates the usability of low-cost BCI for navigation in an indoor environment, which is considered one of the daily challenges facing individuals with mobility impairment. A software framework is proposed to control a wheelchair using three modes of operations: brain-controlled, autonomous and semi-autonomous, taking into consideration the usability and safety requirements. A prototype system based on the proposed framework was developed. The system can detect an obstacle in the front, right and left sides of the wheelchair and can stop the movement automatically to avoid collation. The usability evaluation of the proposed system, in terms of effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction, shows that it can be very helpful in the daily life of the mobility impaired people. An experiment was conducted to assess the usability of the proposed framework using the prototype system. Subjects steered the wheelchair using the three different operation modes effectively by controlling the direction of motion.