Motor Imagery Based Continuous Teleoperation Robot Control with Tactile Feedback

Brain computer interface (BCI) adopts human brain signals to control external devices directly without using normal neural pathway. Recent study has explored many applications, such as controlling a teleoperation robot by electroencephalography (EEG) signals. However, utilizing the motor imagery EEG-based BCI to perform teleoperation for reach and grasp task still has many difficulties, especially in continuous multidimensional control of robot and tactile feedback. In this research, a motor imagery EEG-based continuous teleoperation robot control system with tactile feedback was proposed. Firstly, mental imagination of different hand movements was translated into continuous command to control the remote robotic arm to reach the hover area of the target through a wireless local area network (LAN). Then, the robotic arm automatically completed the task of grasping the target. Meanwhile, the tactile information of remote robotic gripper was detected and converted to the feedback command. Finally, the vibrotactile stimulus was supplied to users to improve their telepresence. Experimental results demonstrate the feasibility of using the motor imagery EEG acquired by wireless portable equipment to realize the continuous teleoperation robot control system to finish the reach and grasp task. The average two-dimensional continuous control success rates for online Task 1 and Task 2 of the six subjects were 78.0% ± 6.1% and 66.2% ± 6.0%, respectively. Furthermore, compared with the traditional EEG triggered robot control using the predefined trajectory, the continuous fully two-dimensional control can not only improve the teleoperation robot system’s efficiency but also give the subject a more natural control which is critical to human–machine interaction (HMI). In addition, vibrotactile stimulus can improve the operator’s telepresence and task performance.