Brain-based control of car infotainment
This work addresses the challenge of hands-free interaction in automotive settings, though it is incremental as it applies existing EEG and machine learning methods to a new application domain.
The researchers tackled the problem of controlling a car's infotainment system using a brain-computer interface based on EEG signals, achieving a mean classification accuracy of 53% with a deep CNN, which is above the 16% chance level for a 6-class task.
Nowadays, the possibility to run advanced AI on embedded systems allows natural interaction between humans and machines, especially in the automotive field. We present a custom portable EEG-based Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) that exploits Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) induced with an oddball experimental paradigm to control the infotainment menu of a car. A preliminary evaluation of the system was performed on 10 participants in a standard laboratory setting and while driving on a closed private track. The task consisted of repeated presentations of 6 different menu icons in oddball fashion. Subject-specific models were trained with different machine learning approaches on cerebral data from either only laboratory or driving experiments (in-lab and in-car models) or a combination of the two (hybrid model) to classify EEG responses to target and non-target stimuli. All models were tested on the subjects' last in-car sessions that were not used for the training. Analysis of ERPs amplitude showed statistically significant (p < 0.05) differences between the EEG responses associated with target and non-target icons, both in the laboratory and while driving. Classification Accuracy (CA) was above chance level for all subjects in all training configurations, with a deep CNN trained on the hybrid set achieving the highest scores (mean CA = 53 $\pm$ 12 %, with 16 % chance level for the 6-class discrimination). The ranking of the features importance provided by a classical BCI approach suggests an ERP-based discrimination between target and non-target responses. No statistical differences were observed between the CAs for the in-lab and in-car training sets, nor between the EEG responses in these conditions, indicating that the data collected in the standard laboratory setting could be readily used for a real driving application without a noticeable decrease in performance.