Coordinated control of an intelligentwheelchair based on a brain-computer interface and speech recognition

An intelligent wheelchair is devised, which is controlled by a coordinated mechanism based on a brain-computer interface (BCI) and speech recognition. By performing appropriate activities, users can navigate the wheelchair with four steering behaviors (start, stop, turn left, and turn right). Five healthy subjects participated in an indoor experiment. The results demonstrate the efficiency of the coordinated control mechanism with satisfactory path and time optimality ratios, and show that speech recognition is a fast and accurate supplement for BCI-based control systems. The proposed intelligent wheelchair is especially suitable for patients suffering from paralysis (especially those with aphasia) who can learn to pronounce only a single sound (e.g., ‘ah’).