Navigation in Virtual Environments through Motor Imagery

In this paper we report on the navigation in a virtual environment by the output signal of an EEG-based Brain-Computer Interface (BCI). Such a BCI transforms bioelectrical brain signals, modified by mental activity into a control signal. At this time only 1-D or 2-D BCI feedbacks are used. The graphical possibilities of virtual reality (VR) should help to improve BCI-feedback presentations and create new paradigms, with the intention to obtain a better control of the BCI. In this study the subjects had to imagine left or right hand movements and thereby exploring a virtual conference room. With a left hand motor imagery the subject turned in the room to the left and vice versa. Three trained subjects reached 77% to 100% classification accuracy in the course of the experimental sessions.