Accuracy of a P300 Speller for different conditions: A comparison

When using a Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) as a spelling device, the P300-based BCI is mostly common, because of its high speed and accuracy, compared to other BCI paradigms. During the last years many studies have been performed to optimize the single spelling parameters, the stimulation frequency and stimulation intensity. Also different options for the electrode position and classification algorithm were analyzed intensively. But most of these studies were tested on healthy, young participants, subjects who may achieve better results than the people BCIs are mainly thought for: people with motor impairments. The tests were performed in a quiet laboratory environment were all possible outer distractions were filtered out. The aim of this publication is to take the results of a previous study, performed on healthy people within a laboratory (Group A) and to compare them to measurements on two other groups. Group B were healthy people that tested the device in a noisy environment, group C in contrast consisted of people with motor impairments. The conclusions deliver valuable results towards bringing BCIs to the end-user.