Operating an underwater manipulator via P300 brainwaves

It would be difficult and stressful for a single operator to operate an underwater manipulator using his/her both hands in deep sea environments while the operator has to monitor or manipulate additional equipment. In order to reduce the operating pressure and make full use of the operator potentials, in this paper we propose a control strategy for operating the underwater manipulator via P300 brainwaves, which provides the operator a new way to operate the underwater manipulator without need for both hands. In this case, the two hands can be used to manipulate other equipment. The manipulator is a master-slave servo hydraulic manipulator with 7 functions, consisting of six degrees of freedom (DOFs) and a parallel gripper for manipulations. A p300 interface is designed by considering operation tasks of the underwater manipulator. It's a 3∗3 image matrix where each image corresponds to an underwater manipulator behavior. An experimental platform, in which a virtual underwater manipulator is developed, is used for validating the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed brainwave-based strategy. Eight subjects are invited to do a typical underwater operational task, grasping a marine organism sample, on the virtual experimental platform. Their experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method is feasible and effective.