Design and implementation of a virtual instrumentation based brain-computer interface

The paper presents an on-line brain-computer interface (BCI) based on visual evoked potential (VEP) P300. The BCI is applied to control a multi-DOF manipulator. This BCI system includes five modules which are visual stimulator, signal acquisition, data processing, communication and motion control of manipulator. Stimulation program and experimental scheme are designed based on LabVIEW platform and virtual instrument technology. The manipulator with the ability of six-direction-free moving and two-direction operation including grasping and relieving is self-designed and developed. In the experiment, the subject chooses the right oddball on a CRT/LCD displayer with eight blocks, those are forward, backward, up, down, left, right, grasp and release, and gazes at it. The electroencephalography (EEG) is sampled to extract the P300 characteristic. The algorithms of peak extraction, correlation analysis and wavelet transform are used to analyse EEG. Based on the comparing of the result of the algorithms, wavelet transform is select to extract the feature of EEG. The manipulator is controlled to move or operate by the subject's EEG with wire or wireless communication. The experiments show that the subject with little training can control the manipulator. The improvement for the future research is also available in the paper.