P300 wave detection using Emotiv EPOC+ headset: effects of matrix size, flash duration, and colors

Abstract

Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) allow interactions between human beings and comput- ers without using voluntary muscle. Enormous research effort has been employed in the last few decades to design convenient and user-friendly interfaces. The aim of this study is to provide the people with severe neuromuscular disorders a new augmentative communication technology so that they can express their wishes and communicate with others. The research investigates the capability of Emotiv EPOC+ headset to capture and record one of the BCIs signals called P300 that is used in several applications such as the P300 speller. The P300 speller is a BCI system used to enable severely disabled people to spell words and convey their thoughts without any physical effort. In this thesis, the effects of matrix size, flash duration, and colors were studied. Data are collected from five healthy subjects in their home environments. Different programs are used in this experiment such as OpenViBE platform and MATLAB to pre-process and classify the EEG data. Moreover, the Linear Discriminate Analysis (LDA) classification algorithm is used to classify the data into target and non-target samples.