Promoting brain–computer interface in China by BCI Controlled Robot Contest in World Robot Contest

Abstract

1 Department of Biomedical Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China 2 Institute of Biomedical Engineering, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Peking Union Medical College, Tianjin 300192, China 3 State Key Laboratory on Integrated Optoelectronics, Institute of Semiconductors, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100083, China The year ahead marks the 50th anniversary of the first publication on the brain–computer interface (BCI) proposed by Vidal in 1973. Over the past decades, continuous progress has been made in designing and optimizing the BCI system toward a high-performance, robust and ease-of-use “mind reading”. The nascent field of BCI has brought together scientists from neuroscience, computer science as well as engineers and clinicians worldwide to address the highly challenging problem. The convergence of disciplines also initiated a series of internationally prestigious BCI competitions to expedite innovation, e.g., the BCI competition I to IV and the CYBATHLON. In China, since the beginning of the new century, the technology of BCI has been developing on a fast track and has received rapidly growing attention for researchers from multiple disciplines. To facilitate multi-disciplinary academic exchange and push the BCI technology toward practical application, the first and second China BCI Competitions were held in 2010 and 2015, respectively, which were organized by Tsinghua University and supported by the National Science Foundation of China (NSFC). Beyond the BCI community, the BCI competition was later opened to the general public as well as business and industry to promote the availability and accessibility of the niche BCI technology in China. As part of the World Robot Contest, this competition named BCI Controlled Robot Contest was held by a joint effort of Tsinghua University and China Electronics Society from 2017 till now, six years in a row. Very recently, the competition was endorsed by and partnered with The BCI Society, which is one of the most authoritative international organizations in the field of BCI. Since the inception of the BCI Controlled Robot Contest, tens of thousands of players have participated in this nationwide “BCI Olympic Games”. In 2021, the contest subsumed four main sections, including algorithm competition, project contest, youth outstanding paper award, and project exhibition. Specifically, the algorithm competition and project contest aimed to sift out the top-notch algorithms and the bestperformance subjects, respectively. For the algorithm competition in 2021, there were seven parallel tracks that fell into the category of four dominant BCI paradigms, i.e., steady-state visual evoked potential based BCI (SSVEP-BCI), motor imagery BCI (MI-BCI), rapid visual serial presentation based BCI (RSVP-BCI), and affective