Reza Abiri

MH Farhadi, Ali Rabiee, Sima Ghafoori et al.

Shared autonomy systems require principled methods for inferring user intent and determining appropriate assistance levels. This is a central challenge in human-robot interaction, where systems must be successful while being mindful of user agency. Previous approaches relied on static blending ratios or separated goal inference from assistance arbitration, leading to suboptimal performance in unstructured environments. We introduce BRACE (Bayesian Reinforcement Assistance with Context Encoding), a novel framework that fine-tunes Bayesian intent inference and context-adaptive assistance through an architecture enabling end-to-end gradient flow between intent inference and assistance arbitration. Our pipeline conditions collaborative control policies on environmental context and complete goal probability distributions. We provide analysis showing (1) optimal assistance levels should decrease with goal uncertainty and increase with environmental constraint severity, and (2) integrating belief information into policy learning yields a quadratic expected regret advantage over sequential approaches. We validated our algorithm against SOTA methods (IDA, DQN) using a three-part evaluation progressively isolating distinct challenges of end-effector control: (1) core human-interaction dynamics in a 2D human-in-the-loop cursor task, (2) non-linear dynamics of a robotic arm, and (3) integrated manipulation under goal ambiguity and environmental constraints. We demonstrate improvements over SOTA, achieving 6.3% higher success rates and 41% increased path efficiency, and 36.3% success rate and 87% path efficiency improvement over unassisted control. Our results confirmed that integrated optimization is most beneficial in complex, goal-ambiguous scenarios, and is generalizable across robotic domains requiring goal-directed assistance, advancing the SOTA for adaptive shared autonomy.

Ali Rabiee, Sima Ghafoori, Anna Cetera et al.

This research aims to decode hand grasps from Electroencephalograms (EEGs) for dexterous neuroprosthetic development and Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) applications, especially for patients with motor disorders. Particularly, it focuses on distinguishing two complex natural power and precision grasps in addition to a neutral condition as a no-movement condition using a new EEG-based BCI platform and wavelet signal processing. Wavelet analysis involved generating time-frequency and topographic maps from wavelet power coefficients. Then, by using machine learning techniques with novel wavelet features, we achieved high average accuracies: 85.16% for multiclass, 95.37% for No-Movement vs Power, 95.40% for No-Movement vs Precision, and 88.07% for Power vs Precision, demonstrating the effectiveness of these features in EEG-based grasp differentiation. In contrast to previous studies, a critical part of our study was permutation feature importance analysis, which highlighted key features for grasp classification. It revealed that the most crucial brain activities during grasping occur in the motor cortex, within the alpha and beta frequency bands. These insights demonstrate the potential of wavelet features in real-time neuroprosthetic technology and BCI applications.

Ali Rabiee, Sima Ghafoori, Anna Cetera et al.

This study aims to enhance BCI applications for individuals with motor impairments by comparing the effectiveness of tripolar EEG (tEEG) with conventional EEG. The focus is on interpreting and decoding various grasping movements, such as power grasp and precision grasp. The goal is to determine which EEG technology is more effective in processing and translating grasp related neural signals. The approach involved experimenting on ten healthy participants who performed two distinct grasp movements: power grasp and precision grasp, with a no movement condition serving as the baseline. Our research presents a thorough comparison between EEG and tEEG in decoding grasping movements. This comparison spans several key parameters, including signal to noise ratio (SNR), spatial resolution via functional connectivity, ERPs, and wavelet time frequency analysis. Additionally, our study involved extracting and analyzing statistical features from the wavelet coefficients, and both binary and multiclass classification methods were employed. Four machine learning algorithms were used to evaluate the decoding accuracies. Our results indicated that tEEG demonstrated superior performance over conventional EEG in various aspects. This included a higher signal to noise ratio, enhanced spatial resolution, and more informative data in ERPs and wavelet time frequency analysis. The use of tEEG led to notable improvements in decoding accuracy for differentiating movement types. Specifically, tEEG achieved around 90% accuracy in binary and 75.97% for multiclass classification. These results are markedly better than those from standard EEG, which recorded a maximum of 77.85% and 61.27% in similar tasks, respectively. These findings highlight the superior effectiveness of tEEG over EEG in decoding grasp types and its competitive or superior performance in complex classifications compared with existing research.

Reza Abiri, Soheil Borhani, Xiaopeng Zhao et al.

Brain-Machine Interaction (BMI) system motivates interesting and promising results in forward/feedback control consistent with human intention. It holds great promise for advancements in patient care and applications to neurorehabilitation. Here, we propose a novel neurofeedback-based BCI robotic platform using a personalized social robot in order to assist patients having cognitive deficits through bilateral rehabilitation and mental training. For initial testing of the platform, electroencephalography (EEG) brainwaves of a human user were collected in real time during tasks of imaginary movements. First, the brainwaves associated with imagined body kinematics parameters were decoded to control a cursor on a computer screen in training protocol. Then, the experienced subject was able to interact with a social robot via our real-time BMI robotic platform. Corresponding to subject's imagery performance, he/she received specific gesture movements and eye color changes as neural-based feedback from the robot. This hands-free neurofeedback interaction not only can be used for mind control of a social robot's movements, but also sets the stage for application to enhancing and recovering mental abilities such as attention via training in humans by providing real-time neurofeedback from a social robot.

Reza Abiri, Griffin Heise, Xiaopeng Zhao et al.

Brain computer interface (BCI) provides promising applications in neuroprosthesis and neurorehabilitation by controlling computers and robotic devices based on the patient's intentions. Here, we have developed a novel BCI platform that controls a personalized social robot using noninvasively acquired brain signals. Scalp electroencephalogram (EEG) signals are collected from a user in real-time during tasks of imaginary movements. The imagined body kinematics are decoded using a regression model to calculate the user-intended velocity. Then, the decoded kinematic information is mapped to control the gestures of a social robot. The platform here may be utilized as a human-robot-interaction framework by combining with neurofeedback mechanisms to enhance the cognitive capability of persons with dementia.