Design and Optimization of a BCI-Driven Telepresence Robot Through Programming by Demonstration

Abstract

Improving the life quality of people with severe motor paralysis has a significant impact on restoring their functional independence to perform activities of daily living (ADL). Telepresence is a subfield of the robotic-assisted route, where human plays the role of an operator, sending high-level instructions to an assistive robot while receiving sensory feedback. However, for severely motor-impaired people, conventional interaction modalities may not be suitable due to their complete paralysis. Thus, designing alternative ways of interaction such as Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCI) is essential for a telepresence capability. We propose a novel framework that integrates a BCI system and a humanoid robot to develop a brain-controlled telepresence system with multimodal control features. In particular, the low-level control is executed by Programming by Demonstration (PbD) models, and the higher-level cognitive commands are produced by a BCI system to perform vital ADLs. The presented system is based on real-time decoding of attentionmodulated neural responses elicited in the brain electroencephalographic signals and generating multiple control commands. As a result, the system allows a user to interact with a humanoid robot while receiving auditory and visual feedback from the robot's sensors. We validated our system across ten subjects in a realistic scenario. The experimental results show the feasibility of the approach in the design of a telepresence robot with high BCI decoding performances. INDEX TERMS Brain-Computer interfaces, telepresence, programming by demonstration, EEG, eventrelated potentials, humanoid robots.

Telepresence Robots and Controlling Techniques in Healthcare System

“…High data transfer (ITR) and excellent performance with few or no training sessions [25][26][27][28]. Abibullaev et al [29] designed an event-related potential (ERP) measured by EEG in healthy volunteers to control an endogenous humanoid telepresence robot with distance presence.…”

Telepresence Robots for People with Special Needs: A Systematic Review

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Cognitive System of a Virtual Robot Based on Perception, Memory, and Hypothesis Models for Calligraphy Writing Task

“…In these cases, tasks are frequently changed, so reprogramming becomes inevitable. To deal with this issue, programming by demonstration (PbD) was developed [1][2][3][4][5][6] to solve this problem, where the robot can mimic tasks through demonstration and teaching from a human. However, PbD generates coordinates for the robot by reproducing the human demonstration.…”