Development of a humanoid robot control system based on AR-BCI and SLAM navigation

Abstract

Brain-computer interface (BCI)-based robot combines BCI and robotics technology to realize the brain’s intention to control the robot, which not only opens up a new way for the daily care of the disabled individuals, but also provides a new way of communication for normal people. However, the existing systems still have shortcomings in many aspects such as friendliness of human–computer interaction, and interaction efficient. This study developed a humanoid robot control system by integrating an augmented reality (AR)-based BCI with a simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM)-based scheme for autonomous indoor navigation. An 8-target steady-state visual evoked potential (SSVEP)-based BCI was implemented to enable direct control of the humanoid robot by the user. A Microsoft HoloLens was utilized to display visual stimuli for eliciting SSVEPs. Filter bank canonical correlation analysis (FBCCA), a training-free method, was used to detect SSVEPs in this study. By leveraging SLAM technology, the proposed system alleviates the need for frequent control commands transmission from the user, thereby effectively reducing their workload. Online results from 12 healthy subjects showed this developed BCI system was able to select a command out of eight potential targets with an average accuracy of 94.79%. The autonomous navigation subsystem enabled the humanoid robot to autonomously navigate to a destination chosen utilizing the proposed BCI. Furthermore, all participants successfully completed the experimental task using the developed system without any prior training. These findings illustrate the feasibility of the developed system and its potential to contribute novel insights into humanoid robots control strategies.