BlinkFruity: A Real-Time EEG Based Neurofeedback Game for Brain-Computer Interface

The Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) is a communication channel between the brain and the computer. It works by detecting the production of currents due to brain cell activity. Among many non-invasive brain signal recording methods, Electroencephalography (EEG) is one of the most popular methods. EEG controlled applications widely range from strictly medical to non-medical applications. Non-medical applications can not only be used for entertainment purposes, but also can help a subject to experience BCI application, achieve better control with rehabilitation systems and can be a strong motivation to practice BCI system. Brain signals are weak and contain lots of artifacts like muscle movements, cardiac, eye blink, power source, and amplitude artifacts. Although eye blink is considered as one of the strongest artifacts, this study uses eye blink as a tool to control signal to play BlinkFruity game, where users collect fruits into a basket using eye blink only. To attain this objective, at first, the brain activity was recorded using OpenBCI device and 500ms window data was taken to process in real-time. Then the notch filter was applied to remove powerline noise. The eye blink was detected by using signal thresholding method reading from EEG data. Blink detection accuracy of 86.23% was obtained using blink control applying on first three subjects.