Brain-controlled wheelchair system based on SSVEP

In this paper, a brain-controlled wheelchair system is proposed, which is one of the important applications of brain-computer interfaces (BCI). It can improve people’s quality of life who suffering from severe movement disorders. This system is designed based on the steady-state visual evoked potential (SSVEP) paradigm. In the proposed paradigm, the user can control the wheelchair precisely by focusing on five different flashing stimulation block. The five different flashing stimuli are corresponding to five wheelchair commands: forward (8.57HZ), backward (15HZ), left turn (12HZ), right turn (10HZ), and stop (‘empty’). To further improve the classification accuracy, the task-relevant component analysis (TRCA) method is utilized. For verifying the effectiveness of the proposed system, several experiments were conducted, the classification accuracy of control commands is 93%, and the average response time of each command is 1s. The experiment results show that the proposed system can achieve ideal performances and have important application potentials in the field of disable rehabilitation.