Comparison of Four Control Methods for a Five-Choice Assistive Technology

Severe motor impairments can affect the ability to communicate. The ability to see has a decisive influence on the augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) systems available to the user. To better understand the initial impressions users have of AAC systems we asked naïve healthy participant...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Frontiers in human neuroscience 2018-06, Vol.12, p.228-228
Main Authors: Halder, Sebastian, Takano, Kouji, Kansaku, Kenji
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis
assistive technology
Auditory evoked potentials
auditory stimulation
BCI
Brain
Brain research
Communication
Computer applications
EEG/ERP
Event-related potentials
Eye
eye-tracking
Finger
Implants
Injuries
Methods
Neuroscience
Sensory integration
visual stimulation
Visual system
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Summary:Severe motor impairments can affect the ability to communicate. The ability to see has a decisive influence on the augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) systems available to the user. To better understand the initial impressions users have of AAC systems we asked naïve healthy participants to compare two visual (a visual P300 brain-computer interface (BCI) and an eye-tracker) and two non-visual systems (an auditory and a tactile P300 BCI). Eleven healthy participants performed 20 selections in a five choice task with each system. The visual P300 BCI used face stimuli, the auditory P300 BCI used Japanese Hiragana syllables and the tactile P300 BCI used a stimulator on the small left finger, middle left finger, right thumb, middle right finger and small right finger. The eye-tracker required a dwell time of 3 s on the target for selection. We calculated accuracies and information-transfer rates (ITRs) for each control method using the selection time that yielded the highest ITR and an accuracy above 70% for each system. Accuracies of 88% were achieved with the visual P300 BCI (4.8 s selection time, 20.9 bits/min), of 70% with the auditory BCI (19.9 s, 3.3 bits/min), of 71% with the tactile BCI (18 s, 3.4 bits/min) and of 100% with the eye-tracker (5.1 s, 28.2 bits/min). Performance between eye-tracker and visual BCI correlated strongly, correlation between tactile and auditory BCI performance was lower. Our data showed no advantage for either non-visual system in terms of ITR but a lower correlation of performance which suggests that choosing the system which suits a particular user is of higher importance for non-visual systems than visual systems.
ISSN:1662-5161
1662-5161
DOI:10.3389/fnhum.2018.00228