Brain-Computer Interface systems have been widely studied and explored with adults demonstrating the possibility to achieve augmentative communication and control directly from the users’ brain. Nevertheless, the study and the exploitation of the BCI in children seems to be limited. In this paper we propose and present for the first time a Brain-Robot Interface enabling children to mentally drive a robot. With this regards, we exploit the combination of a P300-based Brain-Computer Interface and a shared-autonomy approach to achieve a reliable and safe robot navigation. We tested our system in a pilot study involving five children. Our preliminary results highlight the advantages of using an accumulation framework, thanks to which the performance of the children reached the 81.67 % ± 12.7 on average in terms of accuracy. During the experiments, the shared-autonomy approach involved a low-level intelligent control on board of the robot to avoid obstacles, enabling an effective navigation also with a small number of commands.

Towards a Brain-Robot Interface for children

Gloria Beraldo
;
TORTORA, STEFANO;Emanuele Menegatti
2019

Abstract

Brain-Computer Interface systems have been widely studied and explored with adults demonstrating the possibility to achieve augmentative communication and control directly from the users’ brain. Nevertheless, the study and the exploitation of the BCI in children seems to be limited. In this paper we propose and present for the first time a Brain-Robot Interface enabling children to mentally drive a robot. With this regards, we exploit the combination of a P300-based Brain-Computer Interface and a shared-autonomy approach to achieve a reliable and safe robot navigation. We tested our system in a pilot study involving five children. Our preliminary results highlight the advantages of using an accumulation framework, thanks to which the performance of the children reached the 81.67 % ± 12.7 on average in terms of accuracy. During the experiments, the shared-autonomy approach involved a low-level intelligent control on board of the robot to avoid obstacles, enabling an effective navigation also with a small number of commands.
2019
2019 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics (SMC 2019)
978-1-7281-4570-9
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11577/3305641
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