An FDES-Based Shared Control Method for Asynchronous Brain-Actuated Robot

The asynchronous brain-computer interface (BCI) offers more natural human-machine interaction. However, it is still considered insufficient to control rapid and complex sequences of movements for a robot without any advanced control method. This paper proposes a new shared controller based on the supervisory theory of fuzzy discrete event system (FDES) for brain-actuated robot control. The developed supervisory theory allows the more reliable control mode to play a dominant role in the robot control which is beneficial to reduce misoperation and improve the robustness of the system. The experimental procedures consist of real-time direct manual control and BCI control tests from ten volunteers. Both tests have shown that the proposed method significantly improves the performance and robustness of the robotic control. In an online BCI experiment, eight of the participants successfully controlled the robot to circumnavigate obstacles and reached the target with a three mental states asynchronous BCI while the other two participants failed in all the BCI control sessions. Furthermore, the FDES-based shared control method also helps to reduce the workload. It can be stated that the asynchronous BCI, in combination with FDES-based shared controller, is feasible for the real-time and robust control of robotics.