Low-cost EEG based electric wheelchair with advanced control features

Brain-computer interface can have a profound impact on the life of paralyzed or elderly citizens as they offer control over various devices without any necessity of movement of the body parts. This technology has come a long way and opened new dimensions in improving our life. Use of electroencephalogram (EEG wave) based control schemes can change the shape of the lives of the disabled citizens if incorporated with an electric wheelchair through a wearable device. Electric wheelchairs are nowadays commercially available which provides mobility to the disabled persons with relative ease. But most of the commercially available products are much expensive and controlled through the joystick, hand gesture, voice command, etc. which may not be viable control scheme for severely disabled or paralyzed persons. In our research work, we have developed a low-cost electric wheelchair using locally available cheap parts and incorporated brain-computer interface considering the affordability of people from developing countries. So, people who have lost their control over their limbs or have the inability to drive a wheelchair by any means can control the proposed wheelchair only by their attention and willingness to blink. To acquire the signal of attention and blink, single channel electroencephalogram (EEG wave) was captured by a wearable Neurosky MindWave Mobile. One of the salient features of the proposed scheme is `Destination Mapping' by which the wheelchair develops a virtual map as the user moves around and autonomously reaches desired positions afterward by taking command from a smart interface based on EEG signal. From the experiments that were carried out at different stages of the development, it was exposed that, such a wheelchair is easy to train and calibrate for different users and offers a low cost and smart alternative especially for the elderly people in developing countries.