Using Brain-Computer Interface to control an avatar in a Virtual Reality Environment

The proposal of this research is to present the development of a tool that might be useful in rehabilitation, for subjects with disability, that suffer from some kind of limbs movement limitation. This tool carries a 3D Virtual Reality Environment (VRE), which emulates the movement of a healthy person, using the immersion of the subject through an avatar. To do so, and test its feasibility, pre acquired motor imagery signals were used to test the VRE as an off-line Brain Computer Interface (BCI) feedback. The subject´s brain waves were captured by an Electroencephalography (EEG) equipment. For training the classifier, 45 trials, 25 seconds long, were used, and 15 trials for its validation. Five mental tasks were tested with the BCI, and the one with the best results (imagination of the manipulation of a cube) was used to move the avatar through a virtual room.