A Hybrid BCI System Combining P300 and SSVEP and Its Application to Wheelchair Control

In this paper, a hybrid brain-computer interface (BCI) system combining P300 and steady-state visual evoked potential (SSVEP) is proposed to improve the performance of asynchronous control. The four groups of flickering buttons were set in the graphical user interface. Each group contained one large button in the center and eight small buttons around it, all of which flashed at a fixed frequency (e.g., 7.5 Hz) to evoke SSVEP. At the same time, the four large buttons of the four groups were intensified through shape and color changes in a random order to produce P300 potential. During the control state, the user focused on a desired group of buttons (target buttons) to evoke P300 potential and SSVEP, simultaneously. Discrimination between the control and idle states was based on the detection of both P300 and SSVEP on the same group of buttons. As an application, this method was used to produce a “go/stop” command in real-time wheelchair control. Several experiments were conducted, and data analysis results showed that combining P300 potential and SSVEP significantly improved the performance of the BCI system in terms of detection accuracy and response time.