Controlling Home Appliances through Thought Commands

Abstract

Brain−Computer Interfaces (BCI) is a field which has shown rapid advancement over the past few decades. With the availability of low−cost electroencephalography (EEG) signal acquisition devices, it is becoming more feasible to develop hands−free environmental control systems with significant accuracies, which can be used for everyday use. These systems may be used as assistive technologies for disabled individuals or as alternative forms of control for healthy individuals. Hands−free environmental control systems often lack user−friendliness and intuitiveness due to the difficulty of mapping the users’ intentions to control commands that can be used to control the appliances in a three dimensional environment. Therefore, this research has focused on developing a hands−free environmental control system based on P300 responses of EEG signals of a user. The developed solution is comparatively less disturbing for the user and does not use a screen for visual feedback; therefore, it improves the intuitiveness and user friendliness than existing solutions. Additionally, the system has achieved better than state−of−the−art selection times, high accuracies with 100% accuracy for multiple subjects and highly stable results for multiple subjects.