Home care by auditory Brain Computer Interface for the blind with severe physical disabilities

People with severe physical disabilities could operate computerized devices (such as: eye-tracker, visual stimulation BCI, etc.) based on brain activity and without muscle movement. But it's hard for the blind people with severe physical disabilities (e.g., blind amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS)) to use these computerized devices by their eyes. If these people could use their normal brain and auditory sensory to control external devices, it would save a lot of home care manpower. In this study, the authors designed a smartphone application which can receive the instruction from auditory Brain-Computer Interface (aBCI) system and then controls domestic devices. The aBCI system would transfer the specific components of event-related potentials (ERPs) of user's brain waves into control signals, and then manipulated the appliance that user wanted to operate and used its functions. Moreover, the contact function was also added into the aBCI system to help user make an emergency call. We experimented with the system and analyzed the experimental results, accuracy and efficiency, then we evaluated the practicability and gave suggestions for future works.