ErrP Signals Detection for Safe Navigation of a Smart Wheelchair

Abstract

Assistive robots operate in complex environments and in presence of human beings, as such they are influenced by several factors which may lead to undesired outcomes: wrong sensor readings, unexpected environmental conditions or algorithmic errors represent just few examples. When the safety of the user must be guaranteed, a possible solution is to rely on a human-supervised approach. The proposed work presents a smart wheelchair, i.e. an electric powered wheelchair with semiautonomous navigation capabilities, whose user is equipped with a Brain Computer Interface. During the wheelchair navigation, possible problems (e.g. obstacles) along the trajectory cause the generation of error-related potentials signals when noticed by the user. These signals are captured by the interface and are used to provide a feedback to the navigation task, in order to preserve safety and avoiding possible navigation issues.