Development of a simulated living-environment platform: Design of BCI assistive software and modeling of a virtual dwelling place

In brain-computer interfaces (BCIs), the user mental constrains and the cognitive workload involved are frequently overlooked. These factors are aggravated by neuromuscular dysfunction, collateral complications, and side effects of medication in motor-impaired people. We therefore proposed to develop a simulated living-environment platform (SLEP) that was tailored to severely paralyzed people and also allowed the progressive user-system adaptation through increasingly demanding scenarios. This platform consisted of a synchronous motor imagery based BCI system, an everyday assistive computer program, and a virtual dwelling place. The SLEP was tested in 11 healthy users, where the user-system adaptation was evaluated according to the BCI accuracy for classifying the user control tasks. The user heart rate was also incorporated in the evaluation in order to verify the progressiveness of such adaptation. The results of this study showed that user performance tended to increase from the least to the most challenging scenario in learning situations. The results also showed that nine of the eleven users controlled the BCI system in cue-driven mode, completing over half of the tasks. Two of the eleven users controlled the BCI system in target-driven mode, completing two tasks. Taken together, these results suggest that the progressive adaptation in BCI systems can enhance the performance, the persistence and the confidence of the users, even when they are immersed in simulated daily-living situations.