Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

North South University

Senior Design Project Proposal Report [EEE 499A]

EEG controlled Wheelchair “NEURO”

Shiprat Islam Chy ID # 1520806643

Shoyeb Chowdhury ID # 1511674643

Faculty Advisor:

Riasat Khan

Assistant Professor

XXX-X-XXXX-XXXX-X/XX/$XX.00 ©20XX IEEE

 ECE Department

Fall 2019

EEG CONTROLLED WHEELCHAIR FOR

PHYSICALLY IMPAIRED INDIVIDUAL
 Shiprat Islam Chowdhury
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
North South University
Dhaka, Bangladesh
shipratislam@gmail.com
Shoyeb Chowdhury
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
North South University
Dhaka, Bangladesh
shoyeb.chowdhury@northsouth.edu
ABSTRACT- Currently a substantial amount of people in the
world are handicapped or suffer from some forms of paralysis.
At present there use different technologies which helps
physically impaired individual by giving them the ability to move.
But still there are numerous cases in which the patient has full
body paralysis but their mind still work properly. Our project is
oriented for individuals who are physically handicapped and we
intend to build a wheelchair which will enable the patient to
move around by simply thinking about it. To achieve that, we are
designing a rover or wheelchair which is fully autonomous and
can be controlled using human brain attention and meditation
level using brainwave sensors from a EEG headset “Emotiv
insight” which detect brain signal and also use raspberry pi and
Arduino to process the signals and control the rover or
wheelchair. The intention of the project work is to develop a
robot that can assist the disabled people in their daily life to do
some work independent of others.
Keywords— EEG signals, Wheelchair, Raspberry pi, Arduino
[B] One good example of a Non-Invasive Mind wave reading
device is the “EMOTIV INSIGHT”. EMOTIV Insight is fully
supported with an array of data streams* allowing for endless
possibilities and applications for BCI. Data streams include raw
EEG,Mental Commands, Performance metrics (stress, engagement,
interest, relaxation, focus and excitement), frequency bands, facial
expressions and motion data. Control the physical and digital
environment via trained mental commands, or create intelligent
passive BCIs that respond to your brain activity in real time.
I. INTRODUCTION
[A] Human brain consists of millions of interconnected
neurons. The patterns of interaction between these
neurons are represented as thoughts and emotional
states. According to the human thoughts, this pattern will
be changing which in turn produce different electrical
waves. A muscle contraction will also generate a unique
electrical signal. All these electrical waves will be
sensed by the brain wave sensor and it will convert the
data into packets and transmit through Bluetooth
medium. The datas are then to be collected and analysed
thoroughly. The signals received from the headset are
processed by filtering any noise present in the signal and
giving clean and stabl signals in MATLAB. The datas
which we need to operate the rover are the levels of
alpha, beta and gamma waves. These values are set as
parameters and by the use of a raspberry pi to store the
values along with constant processing and then
transmitted to an arduino. By setting the parameters and
creating instructions in the arduino and connecting it
with the ‘Motor Shield’, we’d be able to control the
motors of the rover simply by our thoughts. Mind wave
sensors are not used in clinical use, but are used in the
Brain Control Interface (BCI) and neuro feedback . The
BCI is a direct communication pathway between the
brain and an external device to provide direct
communication and control between the human brain
and physical devices by translating different patterns of
brain activity.

II. PROPOSED TIME FRAME

WORK TO BE WEEK GROUP MEMBER
DONE
Individual Project 2 Shiprat, Shoyeb
Presenation
Background study and 3 Shiprat
EEG headset collected
Paper research and 4 Shiprat, Shoyeb
more B.S
participation in 5 Shiprat
Machine learning
&Robotics workshop
1st paper review 6 Shiprat,Shoyeb
Mental Command 7 Shiprat,Shoyeb
Training to move Cube
Mental Command 8 Shiprat, Shoyeb
training for facial
expressions
More research and 9 Shiprat, Shoyeb
collected templates for
final report
 III. REQUIRED TOOLS Our project aims to perfect the system in a more
convinient form by implementing IOT to the system which
A. Software Tools keeps the patient’s health and physical state connected to the
B. MATLAB cloud and the acquired data can be stored and analysed with
Machine Learning approach to keep the patient’s feed
C. EMOTIV BCI PRO updated and notified to their closed ones. We also plan to aid
medical assistance and build a human exoskeleton which will
D. PYTHON PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE benefit the patient by gaining mobility again for day to day
activities but its methods and algorithms are yet to be
explored through further research and background studies.
E. Hardware Tools
 EMOTIV INSIGHT – A five channel wireless
EEG headset Another paper that I’ve reviewed is “EEG –based brain
 “Raspberry Pi 3 Model B” controlled wheelchair for Quadriplegic Patients”. In this
 Arduino UNO paper the brain signal is taken using a device called ‘Nurosky
Headset’ that has only single electrode to take the brain
 Sonar Sensors
signals. Using single electrode to attain raw EEG data is not
 Servo Motor SG90 quite efficient as less electrodes provides less number of data
 Rotary Wheel (1 inch) to attain the brain signals. However the Neurosky Headset
 L298N Stepper Motor Driver was convenient to operate a wheelchair but the
 Wheel 65mm (Rubber Tire) (*4) implementation of further technology still leaves a question
 DC Motor 12V whether it’ll be able to operate extra functions. Our project
 Robot chassis aims to create a more convenient system for the user with
F. Example of detected Cognitive Waves implementing IOT to the system that will continuously
collect the patient’s health and physical state data and store
it in the cloud. The data can be analyzed with Machine
Learning (ML) approach to keep the patients feed updated
and notify to the closed ones during emergencies. We also
plan to make an Exoskeleton that can give more support to
the patient and ‘’Emotiv Insight’ device is convenient to
operate an Exoskeleton. However more study and research is
needed.

IV. PAPER REVIEW

To summarize the methodology, the EEG device which is
the Emotiv Insight picks up the EEG signals from the
subject’s brain and sends them to the connected computer as
raw vectorized data. Then a computer is connected with the
Emotiv Insight via bluetooth and communicate through the
Emotiv’s API. The API (which is built on JSON and
WebSockets) provides access to EEG data and also supports
training and recognition of mental commands. A server that
listens to requests (i.e., commands such as ‘move forward’,
‘turn left’, etc.) from the computer and sends the
corresponding signals to the rover, where these requests are
acted upon. The actions are the movement commands for the
rover. It is written in using the Flask web framework, and
hosted in the rover’s Raspberry Pi computer. The Raspberry
Pi not only makes for an extremely cheap Linux computer, it
also makes for a excellent bridge between the Python
Programming language and robotics. A Rover, which is a
very simple build comprising of a metallic body, four
wheels, four electric motors, an H-bridge, portable phone
battery, and a Raspberry Pi 3 computer. The main focus here
is on the Raspberry and the server code that goes in it. Each
wheel is connected to its own motor and all the four motors
are connected to the H-bridge. The H-bridge makes
connections to the GPIO pins of the Pi which are controlled
via the server by making requests by any remote device.
 V. SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE

[Figure 2] Training Profile

The EEG data map for collecting the brain signals are given
below

VI. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

The Emotiv Insight device needs proper training to
analyze what,s the user is thinking. By using
Emotiv BCI softwares the device can be trained.
There are many variety of softwares that can be
used such as Emotiv BCI, Emotiv BCI PRO,
Xavier Control Panel, Node Red Toolbox.We’ve
trained numerous times with our headset and
collected the datas for the mental commands but
our training was limited as we’ve been using free
softwares. However, our scopes for acquiring more
precise and higher range of RAW mental signals
can be possible if we access the Emotiv PRO
software. Although we’ve collected some datas
which are the readings acquired when we trained
our device to move a cube in multidirection just by
thinking about it. He following consists the images
of the trained vectorised data and the softwares that
are highly recommended to be used.
[Figure 3] EEG Brain Map (Sensor area)
From the selected areas of the brain we got different EEG
data for different thinking of the user

[Figure 1] Mental Commands Training profile

After creating a profile in the Emotiv BCI software the
training was started.
 VII. CONCLUSIONS
A. The signal generated by brain was received by the brain
sensor and it will divide into packets and the packet data
will be transmitted to wireless medium . Level analyzer
unit (LAU) will receive the brain wave raw data and it
will extract and process the signal using Matlab
 EEG Datas platform. Then the instructions will be sent to the home
section to operate the module. Then the control
commands will be transmitted to the robotic module to
process. With this entire system, we can move a robot
according to the human thoughts and it can be turned by
blink muscle contraction. The research and development
of brain-controlled mobile robots have received a great
deal of attention because they can help bring mobility
back to people with devastating neuromuscular disorders
and thus improve their quality of life.

REFERENCES
[1] Jzau-Sheng Lin,Kuo-Chi Chen and Win-Ching Yang, “EEG and
Eye-Blinking signals through a Brain-Computer Interface Based
Control for Electric Wheelchairs with Wireless Scheme”.
[Figure 4] EEG Data
[2] ]B. Rebsamen, C. Guan, H. Zhang, C. Wang, C. Teo, M. H. Ang, Jr.,
and E. Burdet, “A brain controlled wheelchair to navigate in familiar
environments,” IEEE Trans. Neural Syst. Rehabil. Eng., vol. 18, no.
6, pp. 590–598, Dec. 2010.
[3] J.Williamson, R. Murray-Smith, B. Blankertz, M. Krauledat, and K.-
R. Muller, “Designing for uncertain, asymmetric control: Interaction
design for brain–computer interfaces,” Int. J. Human-Comput. Stud.,
vol. 67, no. 10, pp. 827–841, Oct. 2009.
[4] International Research Journal of Engineering and Technology
(IRJET) e-ISSN: 2395 -0056 Volume: 02 Issue: 04 | July-2015
www.irjet.net p-ISSN: 2395-0072
[5] https://hackernoon.com/mind-controlled-rover-2f43bcfe8eb6.
[6] capstone design, Dept. of Elec. and Comp. Eng., North South Univ.,
Dhaka, Bangladesh, 2018. NSU Capstone Report
[Figure 5] EEG Data

[Figure 6] EEG Data